The Sioux Falls Atheists are not playing around anymore.

Courtesy of the Friendly Atheist: 

Back in May, Dale Hemming, the one-man show behind the Sioux Falls Atheists, paid for more than 20 billboards (most of which were digital) to go up in South Dakota. 

Now he’s back with a collection of billboards, both static and digital, to promote science — specifically evolution and climate change. 

Well so much for subtlety, but then again when has that approach ever seemed to work?

I am typically not a huge fan of the more in your face approach to Atheism, preferring instead to write my ideas down here on my own blog and inviting people to come and discuss or disagree with what I say.

However there is little doubt that this approach will stimulate conversation in Sioux Falls, and who knows perhaps even a few people will find their way to enlightenment.

Primary day open thread. Update!

This will be my last primary day open thread and thank Odin for that.

Today's offering will be, in the order that their polls close,  New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and finally California.,

New Jersey's polls should be closing right now.

The polls in North Dakota, South Dakota, and New Mexico close in about an hour.

Montana is next in about two hours.

And finally the big Kahuna California will close at about 7:00 PM AK time.

At this point there is of course no real suspense as Hillary is already the presumptive nominee, but it will still be interesting to see how certain states vote and if Sanders is actually able to steal California away from Clinton.

As always I will update this post as polls close and information is available.

Update: Well this doesn't bode well.

Asked by @LesterHoltNBC if his campaign ends tonight, Sanders says he'll keep trying to turn super delegates pic.twitter.com/zf6XLJbpR3

— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) June 7, 2016

At some point you are just embarrassing yourself.

Update 2: Donald Trump is speaking right now and reaching out to Bernie Sanders supporters who were victimized by a "rigged system."

Donald Trump to Bernie Sanders supporters: "We welcome you with open arms" https://t.co/oZz0jUmo8i #PrimaryDay https://t.co/HeiM2uj1D1

— CNN (@CNN) June 8, 2016

I bet he really thinks he can get some of them to come over to the dark side too.

And who knows, maybe he's right.

Update 3: Hillary just won New Jersey. Well that's one down.

Update 4: Sanders wins North Dakota. (It is the last caucus state.)

Update 5: In the speech she is giving right now Hillary Clinton just referred to herself as the first female presidential nominee in history.

Oh it is on now!

Update 6: New Mexico has been called for Hillary now as well.

Update 7: Hillary has now won South Dakota.

Update 8:

Speaking is hard for me. But come January, I want to say these two words: "Madam President." #ImWithHer

— Gabrielle Giffords (@GabbyGiffords) June 8, 2016

By the way Hillary is leading in California.

Update 9: Sanders has won Montana with a whole 21 delegates up for grabs.

South Dakota police arrest couple in possession of numerous illegal guns and bomb making materials. But don't worry America, they're white folks.

Courtesy of the Argus Leader:  

Authorities seized an arsenal of illegal guns, grenades and bomb-making materials from a southeastern Sioux Falls apartment Thursday, days after a bullet pierced a neighbor's wall. 

Officers executed a search warrant at 4901 E. 54th St. as part of an investigation into how a .22-caliber slug wound up inside a next door neighbor's mattress. 

Darren Kyle Zafft, 29, and Jennifer Marie Cash, 35, were arrested and charged with multiple counts of possession of controlled weapons and explosives with criminal intent. 

Police found 114 guns, including more than a dozen illegally modified rifles and shotguns. They found two handmade silencers, multiple grenades, about 10,000 rounds of ammunition and $20,000 cash. The bomb squad also removed gunpowder, fuses, and other equipment for making explosive devices. 

"This could have been a very dangerous situation," police spokesman Sam Clemens said.

According to the police Zafft was the owner of most of the guns, and seemed a little hostile toward authorities, indicated somewhat by the photo of a burning police car on his Facebook page.

Family members expressed frustration over the arrest, and his uncle knew exactly who to blame:

Source

Yeah, because everybody knows that if you arrest a Muslim with a cache of weapons and bomb making materials you just stopped a terrorist attack, but if you arrest a white Christian with a cache of illegal weapons and bomb making materials that's just Obama attacking our 2nd Amendment rights again.

Could not be simpler. And if you have any doubt, then you are simply not watching enough Fox News.

South Dakota gun show vendor sells "Running Ni**er" targets.

Courtesy of TPM:  

A vendor at a gun show this weekend in Sioux Falls, S.D. was spotted selling shooting targets with a cartoonish depiction of a black man and bearing the words "Official Runnin' N****r Target," television station KSFY reported on Sunday. 

While a crew from KSFY was reporting on the "Collector's Classic Gun Show," one of the station's photographers noticed the targets showing the cartoonish silhouette. The KSFY photographer confronted the unidentified vendor who was selling the targets for 10 cents each and who was unfazed by the photographer's questions. 

"Why are those on there?" KSFY's photographer asked. 

"Why aren't they?" the vendor said. "They're just targets." 

"Aren't they offensive in nature?" the photographer asked. 

"To who? Are you a negro?" the vendor said. "You know there's some black people and then there's some negroes." 

The unidentified vendor also added that he'd "sold 500 of them this weekend so what difference does it make?"

Of course when confronted by the news crews the organizer and gun show officials claimed to be "disgusted" by the targets and that they certainly did not "condone such things."

Of course those statements might have held more weight if the man had not already sold 500 of the targets just that weekend.

Makes it kind of hard to imagine that the organizers did not notice what he was selling until KSFY brought it to their attention. Don'tcha think?

Man it sure is a good thing that America is now post racist. Just imagine how bad things probably were before we did away with racism.

South Dakota ends its "don't Jerk and Drive campaign. Wait, what?

Courtesy of My Fox Chicago:

Officials for the state of South Dakota have removed a “Don't Jerk and Drive” safety campaign after complaints about the sexual overtones of the message. 

The campaign, created by the state's Department of Public Safety, was meant to ask drivers not to overcorrect, or jerk, steering wheels while driving on icy and snowy roads. 

But officials opted to kill the campaign after multiple complaints that the phrase wasn't appropriate.

So to be clear, it IS okay to masturbate while driving in South Dakota?

I'm asking for a friend. 

Famous biker bar in Sturgis, South Dakota regrets allowing Ted Nugent to perform there.

Courtesy of KOTA:  

Michael Ballard, owner of Full Throttle Saloon, says Nugent was booked a year ago, and if he knew about this issue sooner, he wouldn't have booked Nugent. He says the Throttle is not a racist establishment. "I can't turn around and walk away from $150,000," said Ballard. "I mean that's the nuts and bolts of it. Now that we're made aware of it, we'll listen to it next time." 

Ballard says he won't be booking Nugent in the future, unless things are resolved between Nugent and Native Americans. 

Those comments were in response to protests from native American groups outside of the saloon after hearing that Nugent referred to them as, " 4 stinkyass unclean dipshit protestors that admitted they hate me AND ALL WHITE PEOPLE THAT STOLE THEIR LAND BULLSHIT!! See, it aint me they hate, they hate all Americans that produce & live the American Dream. Simply insane!

This is what James Swan, president of The Urban Warrior Society, had to say in response about Nugent:

"Ted Nugent, you're a slob. You're an evil, horrible being, and Native Americans don't want you to like us," said Swan. "We don't want you to wear our head dress, we don't want you to act like you're native, because you're not."

You know it often appears that some Teabaggers are itching to restart the Civil War, but Nugent appears to be going old school and attempting to reignite the American Indian Wars.

Alaska most corrupt state by population. Gee, no kidding.

Courtesy of KTOO:  

Alaska was No. 1 for corruption-related convictions of federal, state and local public employees and elected officials, averaged over the state’s population. When averaged over the number of public employees per state, Alaska ranked seventh. Convictions were counted from 1976 to 2008, based on data from the U.S. Department of Justice. 

The rankings were just one item the researchers fed into their statistical analyses testing for connections between corruption and state spending. 

Four theories were tested: 

1. The more corruption there is, the bigger the budget; 
2. Corruption skews spending toward capital spending, construction and highways; 
3. Corruption skews spending toward salaries, wages and debt financing; 
4. and Corruption skews state spending away from social sectors, such as education, welfare and health. 

Their analyses backed all four theories. The researchers also presented a statistical model that suggests if Alaska had merely “average” corruption, the state could save more than $900 million a year.

To be fair between 2006 and 2008 we were convicting politicians right and left. (Well Right anyway.) However just because the FBI is not throwing them in jail at the same pace certainly does not mean that the corruption is any less than it was before.

It just means our politicians have become better at hiding their criminal activities.  

Of course in some cases the politicians simply quit their jobs half way through to avoid prosecution, which may skew the number of convictions as well.

The rest in the top five of corrupt states were

2) Mississippi
3) Louisiana
4) North Dakota
5) South Dakota

You know why can't Alaska be number one is something good for a change, instead of number one in things like corruption, rape, and alcoholism?

Former Senate candidate Annette Bosworth arrested for fraudulently gathering vote signatures. Now why does that name sound familiar?

Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal:

 South Dakota authorities on Wednesday arrested former U.S. Senate candidate Annette Bosworth, alleging she fraudulently attested to gathering voter signatures when she was really on a Christian mission trip to the Philippines. 

South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley charged Dr. Bosworth with six counts of perjury and six counts of filing false documents related to election campaign laws. The arrest warrant was served a day after Dr. Bosworth lost the Republican primary with just 6% of the vote.

An IM visitor sent me this article along with a reminder that we have discussed Bosworth on this blog before.

At the time we noted that Bosworth was being ridiculed in  South Dakota for posting a selfie with Palin.

It should be noted that Palin never did officially endorse Bosworth (Apparently she could not come up with enough money?). However it seems the Palin curse is powerful enough to affect a candidate simply by standing too close to the Wasilla Wendigo.

Here's a question. Do you think that Palin is drawn to candidates who are cripplingly unethical, or is it just that there are so many unethical people running around among the conservative movement these days that it is hard to find one who is not a total shit?

Alaska rated number five among MOST corrupt states. So proud. Update!

Courtesy of Business Insider:

To get a true sense of the most corrupt state, we need to know how many convictions there have been on a population basis. So we went back to Justice Department data cited by Madigan, to see which states saw the greatest number of convictions per 100,000.

I happen to know that Alaska is VERY corrupt, so for Louisiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Kentucky to beat us is REALLY saying something. Especially considering the fact that we actually had a group of politicians who referred to themselves as the Corrupt Bastards Club.

Did anybody else notice that the top eight out of ten are ALL states with Republican Governors? 

I'm sure that's simply a coincidence. Right?

Update: Oops I stand corrected, apparently Kentucky has a Democrat in the Governor's mansion. My bad. 

South Dakota Senatorial candidate mocked by newspaper after having picture taken with Sarah Palin.

Here is the headline from the article:

Bosworth cozies up to Palin.

Followed up by this:

This one picture sums up the Bosworth campaign: Say anything for attention and money. (And BosworthForSenate.com still does nothing but ask for money.)

It's pretty funny that just the very image posing with Palin dismisses this person as a serious candidate.

Not that Dr. Annette Bosworth did not already have skeletons in her closet:  

Sioux Falls Doctor Annette Bosworth made her candidacy official Tuesday. The 41-year-old physician will campaign against former Governor Mike Rounds and state Senator Larry Rhoden in next June's primary. 

Bosworth has been in and out of the headlines the past several months while fighting to keep her medical license for employing an assistant without the proper agreements in place. But Bosworth believes those experiences have made her battle tested and she is touting her career as a physician as an asset for her candidacy.

Ah almost losing your license for breaking the law, sounds EXACTLY like somebody who would seek an endorsement or photo-op from Sarah Palin.

By the way speaking of Palin this photo was sent to to me with the caption; "Palin tried the 'do you know who I am?' bit at Denver airport to try and get an earlier flight. Ours was delayed by 3 hours."



The sad fact for Palin's future is that fewer and fewer people remember who she is, and those who do really don't give a shit.

South Dakota legislators give stupid a bad name.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

See actually these guys are brilliant. They knew that all they had to do was string a bunch of sciency-like words together, that all ended in "logical", and people would not notice that the resolution they just passed did not make any damn sense. Especially if those "people" had the misfortune of getting their education from the South Dakota school district.

Let me guess. The people of South Dakota just LOVE Sarah Palin, don't they?