By Eric Lochridge

Is it just me, or does John McCain’s appearance at the Buffalo Chip Campground on Monday, Aug. 4, seem like a political disaster in the making?
I mean, sure, the event is billed as a tribute to America’s veterans. Nothing wrong with that.
But with the Chip’s, uh, storied reputation, don’t you think a candidate for president would do better to steer clear? And what are the chances he’ll stick around for the Miss Buffalo Chip preliminaries, the Wet & Wild women’s wrestling or any of the other fabled, unofficial contests in the area?
I know a wily old guy like McCain and his people usually know what they’re doing, so I won’t worry too much. And I’m sure whatever McCain may not know, Barack Obama’s campaign, with its hired hands from South Dakota, will make sure he finds out, at the right time of course.

By Kevin Woster

It came from a local conservative, an evangelical Christian who e-mails me regularly, seems to believe that liberals could bring the end of life on earth as we know it and occasionally quotes Scripture to back it up.

That’s how I got the phony Maureen Dowd column, the one where the New York Times columnist blows the lid of the Obama machine’s unethical fund-raising procedure, and reveals that large donations are coming from the Middle East.

Not.

Double not. Squared. With a not on top.

Oh, and did I say “not?”

Just to be sure: Not. Not. Not. Not. Not.

And not.

Dowd never wrote it. One of my buddies here in town - an Internet guru who graciously does online fact-checking and information searches for me as sort of a service to people with online disabilities - reacted with immediate skepticism when I e-mailed him a copy of the alleged Dowd column.

“It’s interesting,” he wrote back. “But it doesn’t read like Maureen Dowd to me.”

Indeed.

A few minutes later - the guy works at the speed of light on the Internet, compared to my well-chronicled speed of sludge - he offered a confirmation of his suspicions: Dowd never wrote it. The column she actually wrote on the day listed on the phony was actually about Clinton supporters.

So who did write it? How much more of that stuff is coming?

And how many votes will Obama lose through outright lies on the Internet?

Enough to make the difference?

By Kevin Woster

It has Jarding written all over it.

The first Tim Johnson ad, I mean.

Steve Jarding - another one of the Corn Palace kids who have helped shape the Democratic Party in South Dakota and, increasingly, nationwide - is dealing with perhaps the scariest issue (for paranoid campaign managers, at least) of Sen. Tim Johnson’s so-far-uneventful reelection run: his speech.

Speech and the senator’s slow process in recovering it are at the center of the campaign’s first TV ad, which began running this evening and can be seen on Johnson’s campaign Web site - www.timjohnson.com - as well as right here on Mount Blogmore, provided Todd Williams did his job.

(What, me load a video? Get serious.)

The ad highlights the senator’s relationship with his wife, Barbara, who was literally at her husband’s side throughout the dark hours of his illness and the long days, weeks and months of recovery. And it gives the Johnsons a chance to emphasize all that he - they - have overcome in the senator’s fight, first for life, then for a return to the Senate, now for reelection.

Even more, it allows Johnson to officially open the discussion on his lingering verbal impairment - a valid issue given the importance of communication skills in Congress - on his own terms, in his own words.

Got an issue that concerns you? Bring it up yourself. Smart. (Ah, those Mitchell Steves …)

If there is a downside to the ad, it is that Johnson’s much-improved, yet-challenged speech is emphasized by the casual clarity of his wife’s. And even in what must have been carefully chosen, well-rehearsed words, Johnson shows - and admits as part of the script - that he has a ways to go.

But it’s not much of a downside, and the interplay of husband and wife is charming.

It’s the kind of beginning you’d expect from a experienced incumbent with plenty of dough and a seasoned campaign manager.

By Randall Rasmussen

Barack Obama delivered a major foreign policy speech in Berlin Thursday following a trip to Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel, then John McCain followed with his own speech in Denver on Friday.

The comparisons and contrasts between the candidates’ visions will be repeated throughout the campaign.

What do Mount Blogmorites think?

Here is an excerpt from Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin on Thursday, which can be read in full here: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/24/europe/24obama-speech.php

“Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together. A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more - not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.
The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

We know they have fallen before. After centuries of strife, the people of Europe have formed a Union of promise and prosperity. Here, at the base of a column built to mark victory in war, we meet in the center of a Europe at peace. Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together; in the Balkans, where our Atlantic alliance ended wars and brought savage war criminals to justice; and in South Africa, where the struggle of a courageous people defeated apartheid.

So history reminds us that walls can be torn down. But the task is never easy. True partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice. They require sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy; of progress and peace. They require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other.”

Here is an excerpt from John McCain’s speech to a veterans group in Denver on Friday, which can be read in full here: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_9995302

“Eighteen months ago, America faced a crisis as profound as any in our history. Iraq was in flames, torn apart by violence that was escaping our control. Al Qaeda was succeeding in what Osama bin Laden called the central front in their war against us. The mullahs in Iran waited for America’s humiliation in Iraq, and the resulting increase in their influence. Thousands of Iraqis died violently every month. American casualties were mounting. We were on the brink of a disastrous defeat just a little more than five years after the attacks of September 11, and America faced a profound choice. Would we accept defeat and leave Iraq and our strategic position in the Middle East in ruins, risking a wider war in the near future? Or would we summon our resolve, deploy additional forces, and change our failed strategy? Senator Obama and I also faced a decision, which amounted to a real-time test for a future commander-in-chief. America passed that test. I believe my judgment passed that test. And I believe Senator Obama’s failed.

We both knew the politically safe choice was to support some form of retreat. All the polls said the “surge” was unpopular. Many pundits, experts and policymakers opposed it and advocated withdrawing our troops and accepting the consequences. I chose to support the new counterinsurgency strategy backed by additional troops — which I had advocated since 2003, after my first trip to Iraq. Many observers said my position would end my hopes of becoming president. I said I would rather lose a campaign than see America lose a war. My choice was not smart politics. It didn’t test well in focus groups. It ignored all the polls. It also didn’t matter. The country I love had one final chance to succeed in Iraq. The new strategy was it. So I supported it. Today, the effects of the new strategy are obvious. The surge has succeeded, and we are, at long last, finally winning this war.

Senator Obama made a different choice. He not only opposed the new strategy, but actually tried to prevent us from implementing it. He didn’t just advocate defeat, he tried to legislate it. When his efforts failed, he continued to predict the failure of our troops. As our soldiers and Marines prepared to move into Baghdad neighborhoods and Anbari villages, Senator Obama predicted that their efforts would make the sectarian violence in Iraq worse, not better.”

By Kevin Woster

There isn’t much room to operate out on the fringes of political thought.

Barack Obama is finding that out. To hear Robert Scheer tell it, the Democratic presidential candidate is “in danger of becoming just another political hack.”

Why? Because he didn’t vote the way Scheer wanted - and expected - on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and actually thinks there might be some military work left to do in Afghanistan.

Man, talk about crazy, huh? Whooeee.

It could be hackery, I suppose. But it sounds to me more like a guy trying to be president.

It’s swallow-hard time, where candidates - right or left - get to figure out how to go back on at least a few of their past promises or philosophical stands, or massage them to create enough wiggle room to win an election and maybe, just maybe, lead a nation.

So Obama decides the war on terror might actually involve some, uh, war. Go figure.

And McCain continues, with limited enthusiasm, to get more comfortable with the previously arms-length evangelicals and embrace the Bush tax cuts. How about that?

I like this part of the race as much as fringe-thinkers like Scheer seem to hate it. The major-party candidates stop singing all those wild, charm-the-party-faithful primary love songs and start humming the reality blues.

This is where voters start to figure out exactly who these folks are, and what they might be like in the White House.

By Kevin Woster

Well, OK, first there’s that pesky little election in 2010 to consder.

But that seems to be all that’s standing between U.S. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin and the South Dakota governor’s chair.

Now that she’s having a baby.

The annoucement today that Herseth Sandlin and her husband, Max, are expecting a child in December could carry a second bit of happy news - for Democrats longing for their first South Dakota governor since 1978, at least.

The announcement increases the previously slim odds that Herseth Sandlin will run for governor in 2010. The baby factor has been the X factor in the rumors about Herseth Sandlin’s possible interest in the governor’s chair.

Winning that job would give her four and possibly eight years to start a family, and further solidify her already solid South Dakota base. It would also allow mom to work just the length of Capitol Lake away from her baby, or babies, in what has actually become a governor’s mansion since Mike and Jean Rounds moved in.

It would also affirm the family legacy, greatly gratify Grandpa Lars and give Papa Max a mighty fine place to hunt and fish.

And at 37, Herseth Sandlin would be at the near-perfect U.S. Senate age when she finished up her duties in the state Capitol. And eight years in the governor’s chair after a couple terms in the U.S. House isn’t a bad launch pad for a U.S. Senate race.

There, that pretty much settles that.

Except, of course, for this year’s House race against Chris Lien, and Dennis Daugaard and other possible candidates for the state’s chief executive’s job in two years.

And then there’s the possibility that Mount Blogmore doesn’t have a clue what it’s talking about.

There’s always that. Always that.

By Scott Aust

Those who thought the Obama New Yorker satirical cover was hilarious should be equally hysterical about this Vanity Fair cover of the McCains.

It is hysterical. — R.R.

By Kevin Woster

It’s hard to imagine, of course, a bulldozer terrorist on a rampage in your town.

It’s equally hard to ponder what you might do.

Draw and fire as Ya’akov Asahel apparently did? Who would have the gun? Who would have the nerve?

Asahel, who was described in news accounts as a religious seminary graduate and military reserve tank commander (you gotta like that combination), pulled a gun and shot the 22-year-old driver of another bulldozer gone wild in Jerusalem today, an apparent copycat version of a more deadly attack there earlier this month.

The incident ended when a security officer finished off the driver in a barrage of bullets begun by Asahel.

Viewing videos and reading news reports, I had to admire Asahel for his decisive action. It also made me wonder: What are the gun laws in Israel?

And what would happen if something like that happened in New York or Chicago, or Rapid City?

By Kevin Woster

President George W. Bush had his face near - not quite on - Mount Rushmore again over the weekend.

Sort of.

The last time Bush was there in person, for a visit during the 2002 campaign between incumbent Sen. Tim Johnson and Republican challenger John Thune. A creative news photographer or two found the right spot and lens to put GWB in pretty lofty company - at least in a digital image.

This time, Bush - or at least his image - was riding the side of a 45-foot-long bus that has been dubbed by Bush critics as a museum on wheels demonstrating how “disastrous Bush/conservative policies - embraced by Sen. John Thune - have harmed our national security, ruined the economy and sacrificed key domestic priorities.”

That’s open to debate, of course. But there’s no denying that the bus is cruising the country with that message, and made a quick stop in front of the Four Famous Faces while on the road from Sioux Falls to Boise.

With a little help from a ranger or two in holding off general traffic, the driver maneuvered the 28-ton bus to provide the angle for this shot.

Interesting, whether you agree with the message or not.

By Randall Rasmussen

Barack Obama visited Afghanistan Saturday on a congressional fact-finding mission but one which also is intended to burnish the first-term senator’s foreign policy credentials.

The trip is likely to include a visit to Iraq and meetings with U.S. troops, commanding generals and Afghan and Iraqi leaders.

Obama’s campaign was infuriated on Friday that John McCain had talked about the supposedly secret trip to the Middle East. How much of a secret could it have been if all three network TV news anchors booked flights and hotel rooms along Obama’s expected route?

The network news groupies are treating Obama’s trip like an overseas trip by the president of the United States.

Will Obama learn anything on his first trip to Iraq since becoming a presidential candidate? Can he afford politically to change his oft-repeated stance that the U.S. is losing the war in Iraq?

Will the TV networks finally discover that we are winning in Iraq? Will Obama trip over the facts on his fact-finding trip?

It should be an interesting trip – mostly for how it will be reported and what Obama will say about it.

By Kevin Woster

Is it already time to turn out the lights in the U.S. Senate campaign, and cue the Don Meredith redux?

Well, sure, going strictly by the numbers.

To nobody’s surprise, incumbent Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson is whaling (no, not Whalen) on his Republican challenger, state Rep. Joel Dykstra of Canton in the money bout.

Dykstra has raised about $380,000 in this election cycle. That’s about 10 times your typical South Dakota reporter’s annual salary, but not so much compared to Johnson’s $5.1 million raised so far for the 2008 campaign. And the senator sits now with a cool $2.7 million cash on hand (which is, coincidentally, almost exactly the value of the pile of gold chips under Bill Harlan’s desk up at the Homestake lab, where he spends his lunch hours and coffee breaks sneaking down in the mine with a head lamp and pickax. At least, that’s what I might have heard or read, I think, maybe on Rapid Reply…).

But back to campaign cash, if money means campaign victory, Johnson and his campaign team don’t have much to worry about. Dykstra has something like $60,000 cash on hand, although he says his fund raising is picking up.

Despite the monstrous money edge, Johnson campaign manager Steve Jarding worries all the time. He frets more about what Dykstra is up to than I do about dangling participles and the current location of Steve Sibson. (Sibman, where aaaaare you??? And have you seen Fleming?).

Given the still-sputtering state of Dykstra’s campaign machine, however, Jarding might be able to give it a rest, and have a Pepsi.

Of course, worry is the way for Jarding and other well-paid (although not so well as Harlan, when you figure in that noon-hour gold mining) campaign brains. As Jarding likes to say, these things can go south in a hurry.

He saw that happen, from the sunny side of things, as senior adviser to Democrat Jim Webb in his 2006 upset of Republican Sen. George Allen of Virginia. But the chances of such a upset in this race seem slim.

The campaign is clearly concerned about Johnson’s continued physical limitations, including ongoing speech problems. And at some point, debates will be an issue - as much for Dykstra, who must handle it delicately, as for Johnson and his campaign staff, who would prefer to avoid on-camera, on-stage exchanges as much as possible.

You wouldn’t think there’s enough there to derail the well-financed Johnson train on its road back to D.C.

But, big money difference or not, it’s probably still a bit too soon to start planning the Johnson victory party.

By Randall Rasmussen

The cover of the New Yorker magazine, pictured above, has outraged Barack Obama and his supporters.

The cover, which I find hilarious, depicts Obama as a turban-wearing Muslim and his wife as an radical, complete with an Angela Davis-afro and AK-47.

The article is supposed to be satirical, but Obama calls it an insult to himself and to Muslim Americans (Obama, by the way, is Christian).

Should Obama be outraged? Or should he develop thicker skin?

If cartoons upset him now, what happens if he becomes president and fair game for political cartoonists of every stripe?

Or are we supposed to treat him with kid gloves?

Given the hatred directed at the current White House resident, including from Mount Blogmore denizens, Obama will either have to get used to it or be permanently PO’d.

In the words of President Harry Truman: “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

By Kevin Woster

He brought “a certain civility to this very contentious job.”

That’s what George W. Bush said about Tony Snow and his work as White House press secretary.

I think the president was right.

Snow always seemed the gentleman to me, even when he was handling difficult questions, or asking them, in the harsh glare of an international TV spotlight.

Scott McClelland often seemed impatient and haughty when responding to reporter’s questions. Snow seemed like he understood and appreciated a reporter’s role, as well as his own.

I’ll miss seeing him on FOX News, or hearing him as a radio commentator, just as I’ll miss the spirit and good cheer he brought to the White House when he worked as press secretary.

And, really, how could you not like a guy who played five or six musical instruments and hung out with Ian Anderson?

Snow clearly had a sense of humor. And he appeared to have a good heart.

He had a family, too, and leaves a wife and three children.

We wish them well, and hope they can celebrate the husband and father they had in their lives, even in this profound period of grief.

By Kevin Woster

Nationally syndicated political columnist Robert Novak has John Thune on his list of six possible running mates for John McCain.

Writing with Timothy Carney, Novak calls Thune a “late starter” in consideration for the vice-presidential slot, noting that he is “still revered in party circles as the man who defeated Tom Daschle in 2004.”

But Novak also notes that THune is “an earmarker, and running with anti-earmark McCain would be difficult.”

I wonder if that’s true?

Novak ranks Thune as McCain’s sixth-most-likely VP choice. No. 1 is unsuccessful presidential candidate Mitt Romney, followed by Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Bush cabinet member and Ohio congressman Rob Portman, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

On the Democratic side, Novak has Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine at No. 1, followed by Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, former VP Al Gore (seriously?), Sen. Bob Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania and former Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia.

Last but not lost entirely on Novak’s list is Sen. Hillary Clinton, whom Novak calls: “Immensely improbable if only because she brings Bill Clinton back into the picture.”

Why is that a bad thing? If not for the U.S. Constitution and that pesky 22nd Amendment, I’m guessing BC would still be in the WH - even with the ML scandal to delicately dance around in his reelection campaigns.

No mention on Novak’s list of Tom Daschle - who, to me, seems most likely in an Obama administration to get some kind of senior adviser’s position that would allow him to shape policy but maintain some measure of freedom to be active and engaged on issues and programs, at his choosing.

By Kevin Woster

Sorry, I couldn’t help but resort to a little Fleetwood Mac for this one.

And as long as we’re back in ‘92, remember:

It’s the canines, stupid.

And maybe the felines.

Or the ferrets, the parakeets and the tropical fish.

John McCain owns them all, along with a terrier-sized lead in the presidential race to capture the pet-owner’s vote.

(”Open your eyes and look at the day, you’ll see pets in a different way…”)

Poor, poochless Barack Obama has to play catchup on this one, promising a dog to his daughters - and to voters who mix their politics with their Kibbles.

A recent Purina poll (or maybe it was AP and Yahoo) showed that McCain whistled up the support of pet owners, with 42 percent to Obama’s 37 percent. Among dog owners, McCain leads 43 percent to 34 percent.

And among newshounds? Well, I’m pretty sure Obama leads there, but that’s another issue, tougher to survey - and report.

(”If your springer was bad to you, just think what a bulldog will do…”)

The Purina poll showed that among those who don’t have pets, Obama is way up - 48 percent to 34 percent.

And, of course, a look inside the numbers reveals a racial component here, as there is in the overall campaign. Forty seven percent of whites own dogs, according to the poll, while only 24 percent of blacks have taken the puppy plunge.

So color and pets get all mixed up in the survey - which begs the question:

Which way will the Blue Dog Coalition break?

(”Why not think about times to come, not the things that your Great Dane has done…”)

By Eric Lochridge
An article in the current issue of Rolling Stone called “Obama’s Brain Trust” talks a bit about the involvement of former Sen. Tom Daschle and his associates in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. It’s been no secret that Daschle and many of his former staffers have gone on to work to get Obama elected president.
But the part of the article that caught my attention deals with Daschle’s former chief of staff, Pete Rouse. Under the subheading “The Daschle Mafia,” Rouse’s influence is described:

For nearly 20 years, Rouse served as chief of staff to former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a position that earned him the nickname “the 101st Senator.” “His office inside the Daschle suite was the epicenter of the Democratic caucus,” says Jim Jordan, who managed the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee under Daschle and Rouse before leaving to run John Kerry’s presidential campaign. “It was a superb organization, and Tom’s a rare political talent. But Pete was the skeleton over which it was all built.”

That bit of insight may be interesting, but wait – here comes the irony:

Ironically, Rouse would never have been available to Obama if it hadn’t been for Karl Rove. In the same election that brought Obama to Washington, Daschle became the first minority leader ever unseated — by 4,000 votes — in a campaign masterminded by Rove. But in defeating Daschle, he gave an unwitting assist to the man whose candidacy threatens to destroy the cynical politics that Rove perfected.

Oh what tangled webs we weave …

By Kevin Woster

I never much cared for Chad Schuldt’s style. I think I’ve mentioned that before here on the mountain.

Operating as “Clean Cut Kid” Schuldt could be petty and personal and beyond crass in the way he promoted his liberal political positions and attacked the opposition. That didn’t make him so very far removed from the mainstream of political commentator/activists these days, but it did often make him plenty offensive and unfair.

I much preferred his attitude after the fall, when he’d been charged with stealing what most of us South Dakota working stiffs would consider to be a small fortune from his employer, Hildebrand Tewes Consulting.

In an interview I did with him about that time, Schuldt seemed hopefully human and humane. I haven’t spoken to him since. But I hope those qualities endured and grew through what must have been a difficult court process and public tumble.

And I guess I’m OK with his recently announced sentence, which requires him to serve six months of electronically monitored house arrest and 15 years of probation and requires him to come up with more than $200,000 in restitution.

It always makes sense to me when the criminal-justice system relies on sentences that keep people out of prison and in the work force, as well as with their their families, whenever possible and whenever they aren’t a threat to the rest of us. I think Schuldt fits that scenario. I know many others who fit as well, but unfortunately ended up in prison. That’s a plenty worthy subject of discussion, perhaps another time.

For now, I hope Schuldt never returns to his former slice-and-dice political style. I hope he gets a second chance from some reasonable, compassionated employer to use his obvious skills more productively, and takes complete advantage of it.

And I hope that he eventually returns to the political debate in this state - in a style, without the ironic twist, that actually comes closer to his nickname.

By Randall Rasmussen

Have we won the war in Iraq?

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saturday that the war against terrorism in Iraq has been won.

Credit goes to Gen. David Petraeus and President Bush for adopting a change in tactics by U.S. forces in Iraq that boosted troop levels when the surrender-in-Iraq left was calling for withdrawal and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid was saying the war was lost.

Even the Washington Post – not a conservative publication by any stretch – noted in a June 1 editorial, “The Iraqi Upturn” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/31/AR2008053101927_pf.html), that U.S.-backed government in Iraq and its army was winning the war.

You can tell that the war in Iraq is going well by the relative media silence that has befallen reporting from the theater. If U.S. troops are winning and not dying, the media isn’t interested in telling the story of our success.

As has been true since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, anything that goes wrong in the war on terror is front-page news.

Meanwhile, our ally on another front in South America, Colombia, staged a daring rescue of hostages held by the narco-terrorist group FARC. The rescue, which rivals the Israeli raid on Entebbe, brought three Americans among others out of the jungle where they had been held in horrific conditions for five years.

FARC’s main supporter in its terror campaign is Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, the left’s favorite dictator.

Another reason to celebrate the Fourth of July: We are winning the war against terrorism, thanks to the heroic efforts by our military – heroism that too often goes ignored.

By Kevin Woster

Is Barack Obama flipflopping, fine tuning, clarifying or simply becoming more presidential in his latest approach to the troop withdrawls from Iraq?

Maybe all of the above? Or none?

Obama says he isn’t saying anything he hasn’t said before about Iraq and his commitment to an expedited withdrawl of troops. But he’s also leaving the door open to some flexibility in the plan, depending on what he hears from the generals and other advisers.

(Should he, of course, become president….)

Some call this a flipflop, or at least a softening of his hard-line, pull-out stance during the Democratic primary.

Some call it a predictable shift as a primary candidate becomes a general election one.

Whatever it is, I like it. The hard-line positions that candidates take in presidential primaries are often for show - to capture the base, especially the activists most likely to vote. They’re also often unrealistic.

I don’t want a president who talks, thinks or acts that way. And neither does the world, I’d wager.

I much prefer positions taken during the general election, where candidates begin to reach out to more groups, ponder more expansively the difficult problems they face and start fine-tuning their message to one that might actually work in practice - and in the White House.

I think that’s what Obama is doing now.

I don’t know if he will be president. I don’t know if he should be.

That’s up to you voters this fall.

But I like a more nuanced position on one of the more vexing issues of our time - how to get out of Iraq, and when.

That’s tough stuff - far too tough to be contained in simplistic campaign slogans.

By Kevin Woster

A couple days back, I spent about $40 on gas, just to go fishing.

I could have spent next to nothing - except, or course, for the lost flies - by staying here and fishing the creek in town. But I had the day off and the urge to roam.

So I drove to Newell Dam. Too muddy to fish.

Then I drove to Orman Dam. Too windy.

Then I checked out the Redwater River. Too much of both.

Finally, I went up Spearfish Canyon and found a few cooperative brown trout.

By the time I got back to town for Steve Miller’s going-away party at the Journal, I’d burned a half tank of gas. That’s about 40 stones - $10 less than I paid for monthly rent for that house on South Main in Brookings back in the summer of ‘74. (But that’s another story. Several, in fact.)

That’s a lot of money to spend for a couple hours on the water, and four or five brown trout. Yet, I spent it, seemingly without great regret.

So, if $4 gas has changed my gas-consumption habits, it hasn’t been transformational.

I try to plan my trips to the store. I don’t go out cruising just to cruise. I walk when I can. But I still drive quite a bit, including trips for pure recreation.

A wise friend of mine told me back when gas was about $2 that Americans wouldn’t make a significant change in our driving habits until $5 a gallon. I’m beginning to think he was right.