You can feel it, can’t you? A Clinton-Obama debate at Mount Rushmore. Sen. Clinton stopping by the Canyon Lake Senior Citizens Center to shake hands her with some of her base, Sen. Obama walking the hallways of SDSM&T to share stories with some of his base. It’s getting closer, the possibility that the candidates (or their high-profile surrogates) may stump for votes in Rapid City in advance of the state’s June primary.

And Hillary doesn’t want us to be forgotten. She lashed out at Obama Monday, accusing him of wanting to make us irrelevant, take away our voice. The AP:

In a series of television interviews in states holding upcoming contests, Clinton vowed to press on with her campaign and suggested Obama and his supporters wanted to keep those states from playing a role in selecting the party’s presidential nominee.

“My take on it is a lot of Senator Obama’s supporters want to end this race because they don’t want people to keep voting,” she told CBS affiliate KTVQ in Billings, Mont. “That’s just the opposite of what I believe. We want people to vote. I want the people of Montana to vote, don’t you?”

Montana did vote once already, Hillary, and they donated their 25 Republican delegates to Mitt Romney … hmmmmm … what does that say about their voters?
We’re sure she wants the people of South Dakota to vote, too, right? But our importance in this race is notsomuch that she’s going to win here (or in Montana); she’s not expected to. But we have become part of her spin because we haven’t voted yet, so we matter right now, because we are integral to this new due-process argument she has waged to justify continuing in the race.

So she loves us. She defends our right to vote and matter. Sort of. Right now anyway.

Until we cast our votes on June 4 and Obama wins.

 

Thought I would share with you a couple photos from the Ron Bender Memorial Racquetball Tournament. The first is a photo of YMCA Exec Director Roger Gallimore presenting Ron’s two children, Stephanie and Matt, with photographs which were signed by all of those who participated in last weekend’s tournament. This will likely appear on our Black Hills Journal page this week.

The second photo shows many of the winners in the tournament. I can’t name them all, but I do know that more than half of them beat me in the tournament at one point or another (I’m not kidding). And those in the photo who didn’t beat me just didn’t have the good fortune of facing me — because I wasn’t good enough to play in their division.

It was a great turnout, and a lot of fun … even though I’m having trouble climbing the stairs today. Great job by Dan Linde for organizing the whole thing.

 

We’re pretty thrilled with the launch of our new weekly Black Hills Business Journal. We’ve collected some of the top local columnists to write for the Journal and help our readers manage their money. In addition the Journal will contain news, features, Talking Business, agribusiness, briefs, a local business calendar … everything you need to know what’s going on in the Black Hills.

Our debut cover story couldn’t have been better. New Spearfish business owner Mitch McKie agreed to powder up his face with flour and wear tortillas (and a big smile) for our photographer Kristina Barker. He had a great crazy sense of happiness, so we thought the image fit the man perfectly.

Look for the Black Hills Business Journal each Monday in the Journal and online at blackhillsbusinessjournal.com

Went to the Home Show today because, well, I’ve found there are many projects around the house which are so complicated, that I can’t figure out a way to start them, much less mess them up.

What a great event. Tons of vendors, so many that some had to be placed upstairs (including the RCJ) — I’m afraid many visitors didn’t find their way up there. Maybe when the new arena is finished, there will never be an overflow again.

There was everything you could imagine in one place. And our two toddlers were given so much free stuff, I’m going to re-gift some of it as Christmas presents

But if there was anything disappointing about the show for me, it was something that had nothing to do with the Home Show, but has been bemoaned by others during Civic Center events.

The cheapest soda is $3. Fountain drinks. $3. Those are Denver prices. Yikes.

My wife told me she spotted a couple pop machines when we walked in. I told her they were probably turned off so as not to ‘undercut’ the food court price-gouging, but she’d go look all the same.

And what she found was miraculous. One of the Coke machines had been (mistakenly?) left on. So we got a Coke for a $1. One walk down the hallway saved us $2. It was like finding money in the pockets of your jeans. Or being given too much change back by a cashier (we all return that though, don’t we?).

I realize I’ve now probably spoiled the chances of such a soda oversight happening again at the Civic Center. The overlord of the vending vice squad will lose their job over this, and I wouldn’t be surprised if those machines are wheeled out Monday morning, heading to a less competitive environment, like standing in the cold, outside a supermarket.

But it’ll take more than that to make me feel guilty. I outwitted ‘the man’ , cheated the system, and saved $2.

How may ceramic bathroom tiles will that buy?

Just a little sidenote to the blog item on the Ron Bender racquetball tournament yesterday.

I ran into YMCA Executive Director Roger Gallimore last night at the courts, and he showed me Ron’s racquetball racquet. As a tribute to Ron, Roger is playing with that racquet throughout the tournament. Some of you may know that Roger is a pretty darn good racquetball player, and could probably beat most people if he was forced to use a 2×4 for a racquet … but this was a really nice sentimental gesture; Roger and Ron were very good friends.

For those offended by naughty typos, it would be best to turn away now.

At this week’s Ron Bender Memorial Racquetball Tournament, being held at the YMCA through Saturday, the city parks & recreation department is distributing flyers for their own racquetball tournament, to be held in a few weeks. On the sign-up form, there is a typo of “Tonight Show” Headlines proportions — but only if the “Tonight Show” aired on HBO and not family-friendly broadcast network TV.

See if you can find it…

If you enter this tournament, which of the sizes do you circle? Seems a bit personal, subjective, and probably depends on what was for dinner.

After seeing it, I was thankful that YMCA racquetball tournament coordinator Dan Linde doublechecked the Ron Bender tournament entry forms before sending them out. Bender was an outstanding copy editor and would have caught any typos on an entry form.

And he may have gotten a smile if he had seen the city racquetball tournament entry form.

As you will have already noticed, the look of our blogs have changed.

The change was made in order to a) have more consistency with the rest of the rapidcityjournal.com Web site, b) be able to possibly sell ad positions alongside blogs and c) offer readers a chance to navigate around the entire site without having to click their ‘back’ button.

In the next few days, you will also see a revised home page for all of our blogs.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to ask. And if you are wondering who would possibly buy an ad on Typos And Tribulations — you’re not the only one.

Eight people ran for Rapid City mayor last year.

This year, only two of the five council races are being contested.

Is everyone taking a breather? Or does the mayor’s salary just seem a lot more appealing than a councilor’s?

Sam Kooiker will have a challenger in Ward 2. It would be fair to say that Sam has made powerful friends and enemies with his outspoken criticism of some of the council’s decisions. In last year’s close mayoral race between Alan Hanks and Kooiker, Hanks approved of a campaign mailing which labeled Kooiker a “wing nut” tied to ultra-conservatives. Is it possible that those who don’t share Sam’s views are happy to see that he has an opponent and will presumably have to spend money and campaign to keep his seat?

Tom Johnson has two opponents in Ward 1, including Patti Martinson, who some of you may recognize from RCJ blogs. Johnson is recognized by many as the alderman who was pulled over in his car with an intoxicated 18-year-old cross-dresser in the wee hours of election night last year. Johnson said the two were picking up election signs. Story here. (This would have been a front page story on any other day but election day.)

So this year’s city races may not be as interesting as last year. But how could they?

4,000 soldiers killed in Iraq. The somber milestone was reached Sunday night when four soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad.

Is the number still as real as it was when it was 1,000? It certainly is for the families of those fallen heroes, but have some of us reached the point of tragic saturation? Or as Paul Janensch of the Connecticut Post asks: Are the media just bored with it?

Michael Tackett of the Chicago Tribune points out many papers didn’t report the milestone on their front pages.

The Rapid City Journal has something in this morning and have scheduled a longer A1 piece in tomorrow’s paper (Tuesday), though we also take into consideration that we have a National Guard base and Ellsworth located here … not all communities have such a direct and deep tie to the military.

This excerpt from Richard Perez-Pena appeared in the NY Times:

Five years later, the United States remains at war in Iraq, but there are days when it would be hard to tell from a quick look at television news, newspapers and the Internet.

Media attention on Iraq began to wane after the first months of fighting, but as recently as the middle of last year, it was still the most-covered topic. Since then, Iraq coverage by major American news sources has plummeted, to about one-fifth of what it was last summer, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The drop in coverage parallels — and may be explained by — a decline in public interest. Surveys by the Pew Research Center show that more than 50 percent of Americans said they followed events in Iraq “very closely” in the months just before and after the war began, but that slid to an average of 40 percent in 2006, and has been running below 30 percent since last fall.

I received a call from a man just last week who wanted to be sure we continued to run the military deaths information regularly. He wanted to know which young men and women had given their lives for our country, and where they had come from.

On that personal, individual level, many are still interested. But how much war coverage do you want in your day? And have you noticed your interest in Iraq war news change over the last few years? Or not?

Never have so many been so far off.

(Well, yes they have … but it’s been awhile.)

Each day, when we determine the daily online poll question in our afternoon news meeting, our staff votes on which answer they believe will get the most votes from our online readers.

Man, did we miss this one.

I don’t believe any of us predicted that, when asked “What’s Your Favorite Easter Candy?” that malted robin eggs would win. In fact, that answer was placed in the poll at the last minute, a late suggestion by someone who didn’t even vote for it, and as we put in on the list, you could hear a groan go across the room. (Late suggestions are often not good suggestions … they almost always finish last in voting).

So what happened here? When did malted robin eggs take over as the premier Easter candy? We are stunned. Shock and awe. Holy cow, malted robin eggs come packaged in a mini cardboard milk carton for goodness sakes, how Easter-y is that?

What about the classic and revered chocolate Easter bunny? Or the American standard jellybean? And even if you didn’t vote for those two, how could you not vote for the cute, defenseless little peep?

Shoot, Cadbury eggs are finishing second in the poll, which almost no one in our meeting guessed as well. What kind of country are we living in?

Just when we thought we had our fingers on the pulse of this community …