Going to Cowboy Country- South Dakota

The world contains too many smartasses who think it's funny to crack stuff like the main industry in South Dakota is Mount Rushmore. This is unfair, even for a joke. The SD economic mainstay is Interstate 90, assuming the billboards are econometrically included. (I think the Jinglebob Leather Works may run a close second.)

Somewhere in South Dakota, the West begins. You start your trek in Sioux Falls which is faux West. You see vast seas of corn along the highway, so you know you're still in the Midwest. As you cross the silted ponds that used to be the Missouri River, the corn thins out, and what you do see will exist only at the suffrage of giant spidery assemblies which look like steroidal versions of one of those new species of bugs they're always finding in Papua New Guinea.

Eventually even the irrigated corn gives way to grass and badlands -- and larger signs reminding you that you're getting awful close to Wall Drug where ice water is still free, coffee just five cents, and there is parking for about six thousand senior-citizen tour buses. Here (or just beyond, depending on which nitpickey buddy you're explaining all this to), is The West, and it is now permissible to doff your Topsiders and gimme cap in favor of your Tony Lamas and Stetson. Also to say howdy instead of hello.

Powder River, Let 'er Rip

There's nothing like a week or so in the Mountain West to clear a fellow's head of all the cobwebby nonsense that accumulates in the semi-civilized environment of the Internet, the mainstream media, the daily arrival of third-class mail, and your occasional surprise visitor who wants to sell you something -- a siding job, a new and improved politician, or a better crack at bliss beyond the grave.

I'll report an item or two of possible general interest, but you'll be spared a What I Did on My Vacation deal. Even in cowboy country, even in the mountains when an early winter storm hits, only a few things are interesting enough for comment.

I guess maybe one of those things might be the blonde with the green parrot at the Three Forks State Park campground. Or maybe not.

Land of the Morning Scam

Didn't we already pay for the 108,000 Garands and carbines Seoul wants to sell us for about $100 million? Not to mention a few other favors for the Land of the Morning Calm -- to the tune of some 50,000 American warriors who died too young.

My Uncle Gene was there over a freezing winter, top-kicking a battalion aid station. His summary take: "The Communists just shot at us. The ROKs stole us blind."

Good Morning, Senator Kirk

So whaddawe got here?

Insurance lawyer, insurance lobbyist, long-time crony of Teddy Kennedy, leader of pragmatic (get mine first!) pols as DNC chairman, super-delegate backer of B. Obama, favorite of Ted's kids, and, incidentally of the aforesaid Mr. Obama himself.

Hope and change arrives, cleverly disguised as just one more matinee by those venerable Vaudeville tappers Tip O'Neill and Joe Kennedy.

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An addendum.

The AP reports; "Patrick planned to send a letter to the secretary of state to declare an emergency, allowing him to override a legislative vote that defeated his administration's effort to make the bill take effect immediately. Normally, legislation faces a 90-day waiting period. "I recognize the gravity of this decision and I will make it very soon, and tell you just as soon as I do," the governor told reporters Wednesday night.

If feeding Obama the rubber-stamp vote he wants now rather than in December is handling an "emergency," then what word will Gov. Patrick use when, say, Obama bin Laden is discovered on the bridge of a hijacked destroyer, steaming into Boston Harbor at flank speed?