Lacking answers, Weiland now crams for the test

A little buzz this week in South Dakota with Rapid City doc Kevin Weiland (D) announcing his plans to challenge Mrs. Sandlin (D-SD) in the June primary. Cory Heidelberger was quite excited at the thought of having someone left of Sandlin step up to the plate but he quickly cooled down when Weiland told Kevin Woster at the Rapid City Journal he might not debate Sandlin. Actually, if he gets permission, he might debate Sandlin…

"I'll have to talk to my senior adviser about that first," he said, referring to Steve Hildebrand, a nationally recognized political strategist who helped President Barack Obama claim the White House in 2008.

Here's my favorite part of the Woster story;

"On specific details right now, I think she would kill me," he said. "But I have knowledge and passion for this whole, important health care issue that I think will be invaluable."

In other words… "I have one issue. I have nothing intelligent to say at this point about any other issue facing our state."  S-C-A-R-Y.

And then there is the line about his intentions now to "cram" in order to get up to speed on the issues facing our great state. No doubt his senior advisor will brief him on the left-of-left talking points and he'll be ready to represent us by November.

Actually, Pat Powers at Dakota War College discovered Dr. Weiland does have some interesting things to say about farming.  In Wieland's book Dakota Diet, under a heading titled "Farmed and Dangerous" he says;

Unfortunately, much of what is produced in this country comes from the feedlot. The food industry is succeeding in this manner only because it is relatively inexpensive to fatten the cattle with government subsidized grain….The price for this cheap food comes at the expense of our health, however. For example, when cattle are confined in a feedlot, infectious disease can easily spread. In order to counter this, low dose antibiotics are mixed in the feed. …

There is no other way to interpret that other than… food produced on South Dakota feedlots is not good for you. Can wait to see how that goes over with SD farmers.

With that said, his book looks pretty good and I'm going to buy one. I may skip the foreword by Tom Daschle .  I'm for prevention and a healthy America and a government that promotes and rewards health and not sickness. Looks to me like Weiland is excited for the chance to make government the grease police and the sugar sheriff (to borrow a Huckabee line). I look forward to what he has written about buffalo meat - my native friends have reminded me for years that they were lean and mean until we killed off the buffalo and forced them to invent new recipes (such as fry bread) using the rotten and sparse (and foriegn to their culture) commodities which our government so generously provided during the reservation period (1880-).  Today we know this "diet" has resulted in obesity, diabetes and death.

Back now on topic… one of the things I was excited about in entering the congressional race myself was LEADING the discussion every week. Taking a cue from Scott Munsterman who, prior to his candidacy took a couple years to write an entire book on his vision for the State, a few months ago I mapped out a 38-week plan to focus on one theme a week - everything from transparency to bailouts, 2nd Amendment, 10th Amendment, jobs, insurance reform, American exceptionalism, common sense, veteran benefits, energy independance, sound money and many, many more issues. I had no intentions of executing a reactionary campaign that sounds off a press release every time Mrs. Sandlin dodged right or left. However it looks like Weiland wants to win first then do his homework to figure out what is best for us.

Forgive me now for ending on such a superfical note but perhaps you can appreciate that I myself recently had experts lobbying to give me a makeover so I'd better appeal to the masses. 

With that in mind, I'm glad to see a far better pic of Weiland in the RCJ article. This pic he is using on his website and Facebook has me wondering.

Considering the enormous differences (decades) between these Weiland pics, is it bizzare to anyone else that they chose to use the 1980's soap opera doc pic on the campaign website?