New Dakota Voice Update

Well, the switch to the new Dakota Voice format and website flew like the proverbial rock.

I had been testing the new site at the new location for several months now. Not a hitch. Working perfectly at that location right up to the minute the CNAME change for www.dakotavoice.com was supposed to switch over to the new location.

And when the new website came up, it looked great...for about 3 minutes before it inexplicably crashed, stating it couldn't connect with the MySQL database. Uh huh.

I couldn't resolve the issue in the limited time I had this morning, so I've had the CNAME switched back.

Will make another run at this tonight and/or over the weekend.

That's IT systems for you: everything works great in test, but roll it out into production and...flop!

New Year Brings Changes at Dakota Voice

Tomorrow sometime Dakota Voice will have a new look.

Dr. Theo has been the inspiration for much of this change and has provided key advice at many stages of development.

I'm moving DV completely off the Blogger platform and onto a content management system. There are a few drawbacks to this system, but the gains more than make it worth the switch.

For one thing, the new system will make more efficient use of space, especially "above the fold" space.

I will also be able to place featured articles near the top of the page and even rotate two or three if desired. The old Blogger platform is like a roll of toilet paper; what you pull off the roll just keeps getting farther and farther down. What that means is that if you do an important post, then do two or three quick hits, the important one loses visibility as it streams down the page. The new "featured article" function will allow me to keep a brief excerpt and link to such an important piece near the top, for a couple of days if warranted.

I can also put a short list of the 5 latest posts w/link near the top, and can do the same with the top x number of posts according to what's hit the most.

The new format will also allow me to use a "Read more" function so that on the front page the reader sees the first 2-3 paragraphs of an article and can click "read more" to see the rest. That will allow room for more posts on the front page, as will the 2-column format.

I'll also be using a third-party comments system called Disqus which allows for better moderation control, including blocking a troublesome commenter by username, email or IP address.

There will be an opportunity to become a registered user with Dakota Voice. There is no requirement to do so, but in the future registered users will have a few perks and access to some material that average readers will not.

We'll also be able to run ads and ad rotators more efficiently than ever. This isn't something I've placed a high priority on before, but now that it will be so easy, I plan to seek more advertisers in the coming months.

There are still some bugs to work out, including a few that can't be resolved until the DNS is switched tomorrow. Also, there isn't a real seamless system that I've been able to find for archiving posts from Blogger, so posts going back the last three years are going to take some work to get over there to the new location. I have a plan in progress that should work, but it's going to take a lot of manual intervention to get it done.

So please be patient with the transition. I think we're all going to like the new setup much better once we get used to it.

Michael Woodring at Red County

Michael Woodring of the Constant Conservative has joined me as a Red County blogger. His premier post, "Little Among the States" is now available at the Pennington County site.

Though Michael doesn't live in Pennington County, since South Dakota is a relatively sparsely populated state, for now the Red County editors plan to have all South Dakota Red County bloggers post on the Pennington County page. There may be other bloggers from South Dakota joining us in the future.

Michael's posts at Constant Conservative are consistently among the highest quality available in the South Dakota blogosphere, and I'm sure Constant Conservative will grow immensely in exposure and stature in 2009.

It's an honor represent South Dakota with Michael at Red County.

Thanksgiving Essay Contest at Red County

Red County, the national blog alliance where I also write, is running a Thanksgiving Essay Contest.

The contest is open to anyone who hasn't been previously published at Red County. The winning entry will be posted in the Spotlight Commentary section and will remain there Thanksgiving Day and through the holiday weekend.

Just tell Red County in 800 words or less, why you are Thankful to Live in the United States of America.

Americans are blessed to live in such a wonderful, prosperous and free country. This is your opportunity to express your gratitude for those blessings.

More information is available at Red County.

Slowdown and Changes Coming

Now that the election is behind us, I'm going to be slowing down a bit at Dakota Voice. With the reduction in news traffic after the election, and with also posting at Red County, it only makes sense.

Also, I have a major site redesign in the works and want to concentrate on getting that ready. I'll be adding a lot of functionality to the site both for readers and publishers, and will be moving off the Blogger platform entirely. I'm using a lot of technology that's new to me so it will require a lot of trial and error and a lot of testing. I'm planning on rolling out the new design January 1, 2009.

In the meantime, I'll continue posting on the more important issues we see day to day, and some quick hits that don't take much time. But my thresh hold for what gets posted and what gets ignored is going way up for the next month and a half.

But Dakota Voice is coming out Jan. 1 ready to rumble with our new socialist-inclined federal government...and with socialists here in South Dakota. And we plan to partner with pro-family readers and other conservative battlewagons in South Dakota and across the country in ways we've never done before.

Live Blogging Today

I'll be posting on interesting developments here at Dakota Voice later this afternoon and evening, so stay tuned.

I'll also be doing some live blogging at the PENNINGTON COUNTY South Dakota site at Red County later today. I've never used this live blogging module before, but it looks fun. I may also have some live blogging contributions at the Red County National site.

No matter what happens, it's going to be a very long, very interesting, very historic day!

Dakota Voice BallotPedia Ballot Endorsements

You've probably heard of Wikipedia, the online pop-encyclopedia (the one you have to be careful about with regard to accuracy--anyone can edit it).

A "wiki" is a web site that has many contributors and collaborators who add to the content of the website.

Another wiki site is BallotPedia.org. According to the "about" page, BallotPedia "focuses on ballots, ballot measures, ballot access for initiatives and candidates, petition drives, the supporters and opponents of initiatives and, in general, all things ballot."

It is sponsored by the Sam Adams Alliance, the group that sponsored the SamSphere gathering in Sioux Falls I attended a few months ago.

BallotPedia has a page which lists the endorsements from "new media" and "dinosaur media" for the various ballot initiatives in South Dakota and other states.

If you're interested, you can check the official Dakota Voice ballot endorsements here.

Blogging at Red County

Yesterday I joined the Red County blog network and will be doing some posting over there.

Red County is part of the Partisan Media Group (I knew by that name that, as Eddie Albert said in Green Acres, it was "the place for me"). They are a high-profile political forum which is routinely picked up by some of the national media like Fox News and CNN.

They also have some big-name contributors like Victor Davis Hanson, Michael Medved, and Hugh Hewitt.

I'm the editor of the South Dakota site at Red County called "PENNINGTON COUNTY (SD)" and will be contributing to their "National" page as well.

For the moment, I only have a couple of cross-posts on each which have already been published here at Dakota Voice, and while I'm sure I'll be doing more cross-posting there, I'll also be posting some unique items at Red County.

Some come check it out!

Additional Dykstra Town Hall Material Coming

I made a couple of video clips at Joel Dykstra's Town Hall meeting in Rapid City tonight, and they are currently in the process of uploading to YouTube.

I will add those when the are processed and ready, probably in the morning.

Dykstra gave a great presentation. He was quick on his feet in answering the questions from the audience and provided specific, useful information and ideas. I could see that Larry Rhoden's earlier praise of Dykstra was not misplaced.

Dykstra will serve South Dakota very well in Washington D.C.

I also saw Denise Ross of the Hog House blog a few chairs down, but the event was already under way before I saw her, and she got away before I could get over to her to say hi.

So you can probably find additional coverage of tonight's event at the Hog House blog soon.

Dakota Voice Downtime

Received a notice from my hosting service that the server where dakotavoice.com resides will be down for 1-2 hours for server maintenance starting at 9 pm Mountain tonight.

See you on the other side...

Bloggers Row at Value Voters Summit

Americans United for Life has a list of the bloggers at the Family Research Council's Washington Briefing.

You can check that out here to see the other bloggers I'm working with and check out their coverage as well.

Getting Started: Second Day of Values Voter Summit

The second day of the FRC Values Voter Summit 2008 is just getting started. In a few minutes, William Bennett will speak.

My laptop is feeling better today (for now), so posting will be easier than yesterday.

Had breakfast this morning at an Alliance Defense Fund-hosted event. These guys--the Christian answer to the ACLU--are doing great work!

Yesterday I got to meet with Senator John Thune (R-SD) in his office at the Capitol; what a GREAT representative South Dakota has in the U.S. Senate!

Last night I had dinner at Ruth's Chris Steak House with Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, and his wife Lawana; Tom Minnery, Senior Vice President of Focus on the Family and his wife; and my friend Bob Fischer of Rapid City. Everything I have heard about Ruth's Chris is true: the steak was the best I've ever had, and the service was a joy!

Well, things are getting under way for the day, so I'll sign off for now on the personal notes.

Limited Posting This Weekend

I'll be away from home, and both busy and in places where high-speed internet connections are unlikely.

So there won't be a whole lot of fresh posts this weekend, but I do do have several already written and set up for timed publishing. Several of them should be worth a few LOL's, so check in frequently.

Consequently, if you comment, they may not get posted as fast as normal, but members of the Dakota Voice team will be checking in from time to time and get them published (provided they meet moderation standards), so please be patient.

In the meantime, have a great weekend!

Rapid City Bloggers Interviewed by KOTA

As Curtis Price at Robbinsdale Radical highlights, he and I were interviewed by Rachael Embler at KOTA yesterday.

The segment was about the impact of blogging on the youth vote.

It was done over a Skype webcam connection, so the video quality of the interview portions isn't the best, but it's alright. I'm not sure what happened on Curtis' end, but either there was bad lighting, or a bad angle between the camera and Rachael's laptop, or Curtis was going for that look of the bad-guy avatar on the old movie "Hackers." (No offense intended, Curtis)

Anyway, it was a good segment. Thanks, Rachael.

Steve Sibson (D-Mitchell)

Looks like my friend Steve Sibson at Sibby Online is thinking of running as a Democrat in District 20.

My first thought was, "No way!"

Then it occurred to me that if Stan Adelstein can run as a Republican, nothing is too outrageous.

And remember that a few months ago, Rush Limbaugh was trying to help Hillary Clinton in her primary bid for the Democrat nomination.

With our world turning upside down these days, maybe it's not so crazy to think of Steve Sibson running as a Democrat.

Maybe you should go for it, Steve!

SD Shovel to Dig Up the Best of the SD Conservative Blogosphere

The SD Shovel is now officially up and running.

The SD Shovel is a blog aggregation of some of the Right-of-center South Dakota blogs, and is one of the things to come out of the SamSphere South Dakota meeting in Sioux Falls last Saturday.

The platform where the site his hosted has a good page rank, so will hopefully add exposure to participating blogs. So far, RadioActive Chief, SD Wingnuts, Sibby Online, Voices Carry, and Dakota Voice are participating, and we expect more to contribute in the future.

The site will also be limited to South Dakota-related issues, or national/world issues that are of considerable interest to South Dakotans. We'll be limiting our personal posts and others that don't have some direct or strong connection to South Dakotans.

One of the things that this site is fostering, and that came out of the SamSphere itself, is greater communication and partnership on the Right side of the South Dakota blogosphere. The participating bloggers don't agree on everything, and definitely don't march in lockstep, but we all share a common conservative interest of some degree or another.

We also gained a greater awareness of what's going on out there in South Dakota and around the country, made some great policy connections, and discovered some new resources.

With these, we will be better equipped to pursue our common goal of limited government, and the kind of nation the United States Constitution calls for. Because we all believe, to some degree or another, what Ronald Reagan so plainly articulated:

Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.

Thanks to Gid Oakes of the SD Wingnuts for putting the site together. He's already put a lot of work into it and has done a great job!

New Sphere on the South Dakota Blogosphere Horizon

I had a great weekend in Sioux Falls with some folks from the Sam Adams Alliance at SamSphere.

Gideon Oakes from SD Wingnuts and I drove over Friday afternoon and had a great dinner with Ken Marrero and Emily Zanotti from the Sam Adams Alliance. (Granite City has the best Bleu Peppercorn Burger you can imagine!)

Yesterday was the all-day SamSphere event where several Right-of-center bloggers and other like-minded people from across South Dakota met to discuss the South Dakota blogosphere.

In addition to myself and SD Wingnuts, Sibby was there and gave a presentation on the history and state of the South Dakota blogosphere (Sibby has a cool new business card, by the way).

Joel Rosenthal from South Dakota Straight Talk also gave a presentation on the South Dakota blogosphere.

In the afternoon, John Lauck gave a presentation on the origins and history of the South Dakota blogosphere, and the impact blogging had on the Daschle v. Thune Senate race of 2004, and the exposure of blatant bias from some of the "mainstream" media.

Also represented from the South Dakota blogosphere were RadioActive Chief, Voices Carry, and the VoteYesForLife.com blog.

Look for some significant changes coming to the South Dakota blogosphere in the next day or two. Gideon is doing most of the technical work on it, but it'll be a team effort of several blogs once it's done.

Pastor Steve Hickey of Voices Carry (left) and other attendees

Steve Sibson of Sibby Online giving a presentation

Joel Rosenthal of South Dakota Straight Talk giving a presentation

Author and blogger John Lauck giving a presentation

Ken Marrero and Emily Zanotti from the Sam Adams Alliance

Thanks, Ken and Emily (and everyone) for a fun meeting!

Confusion About Praying for Confusion

My fellow South Dakota blogger Cory Heidelberger is right when he says he isn't a theologian.

Today he praises the work of a group of people dedicated to continuing the butchery of innocent human life in the womb, innocent human life created in the image of God.

In addition for his appreciation of this effort, he also mocks the prayers of some Christians that God would "send confusion in the camps of the enemy" who seek to further that butchery.

Now just like Jim Dobson, I'm not a theologian. But isn't asking the Lord to put the whammy on people you don't like a little unChristian? Maybe the Vote Yes for Life folks would make more progress if they shed their macho bull rhetoric of warfare and enemies and focused a little more on love and community.

For one thing, love and community aren't usually manifest in the killing of innocent human beings, or in the killing of one's potential future neighbors. It also isn't a loving act to facilitate the damage abortion does to the physical and emotional health of women in the community.

If Cory was perhaps a bit more familiar with the Bible, he might realize that it is completely Biblical to pray for the confusion of the enemies of God's purpose and what God has said is right. And while God doesn't always answer such prayers in the affirmative, it is a task that he has accomplished on more than one occasion.

Cory often implies that if one doesn't have a seminary degree in theology, one cannot understand theological things and is unqualified to speak of them. I wonder why he seems to continually violate his own tenet?

He admits he has no theology degree, yet frequently expounds on theological matters. Since (according to Cory's implication) theological knowledge cannot possibly be obtained just by reading the Bible, or even imparted from another (outside of a seminary) such as the many experts someone like Dr. James Dobson knows, then Cory's wife's seminary degree does him no good whatsoever.

Why does Cory continue to lecture us about the unsound theology of others when he is, by his own standard, unqualified to make this determination?

Because there is at least one theological truth Cory does understand, but fails to acknowledge: his professed standard of Biblical competency is un-Biblical and unsupportable.

One of the most wonderful things about Christianity is that you don't need to have a degree in theology to understand Christianity and become born again. All of us, great and small, can grasp the essentials of God's truth and understand how to live a life pleasing to God. Even an uneducated fisherman like Peter was considered worthy of carrying on the Lord's work.

You don't need a degree of any kind, or even a high school diploma to grasp God's Truth. All you need is an open mind, a teachable spirit, and a willingness to follow God and His truth where it leads.

Ironically, that can be harder to achieve than a PhD in theology. Separating our will and desires from God's truth is harder to accomplish than earning a degree.

Whether one is a theologian or not, if one fails to grasp even the most basic elements of the Bible and Christian theology, perhaps one shouldn't foray into theological assumptions without a lot more Bible study.

Lunch with the SD Wingnuts

I had lunch with the SD Wingnuts down at the Eagle's Club today.

They're a great bunch of folks, many of whom I already knew, and got to meet Gid, the master of the SD Wingnuts blog.

After wrangling and arguing for the last week with several folks that seem to be to the Left of Barack Obama, it was good to sit down, chat and have a few laughs with some sane folks.

I probably won't be able to make it every week, but I sure hope to be a regular at least.

If you're from the Rapid City area and interested in spending a lunch hour with some down-to-earth folks who care about conservative values and the South Dakota Republican Party, maybe I'll see you there.

New Blog: SD Wingnuts

Courtesy of Pat Powers at the South Dakota War College, we learn of a new addition to the South Dakota blogosphere: SD Wingnuts. Welcome to the blogosphere, guys!

I had heard of this group in the last day or two, but didn't know they had a blog. It looks like they're based out of or near Rapid City. It's good to see I'm not the only conservative blog in this part of the state anymore. Yipee!