Wampum

The poster depicts US beef in the Korean market. A scary product, mad cow. Eastern SD is short corn and soy, relative to Iowa, and it gets more and more marginal the further one goes west, until its sunflowers and feedlots. We camped at Blue Mound, the Army Corps of Engineers Lake Oahe at Lower Brule (very low water), Sheridan Lake in the Black Hills NF, and the Army Corps of Engineers reservoir at Angostura (nearly waterless) along I-90. Sioux Falls and Rapid City were our shopping towns. It was during the 2006 drought, and we'd finished up our second season working Iowa for Gore, who as everyone knows, wasn't taking curtain calls.

Just five weeks ago the Army CoE were in Pierre to let SD know that this year ND is getting any available water, as the upper Missouri River basin enters the 9th year of drought. Fort Peck is 35 feet below average, Garrison is 30 feet below average, and Oahe is 25 feet below average.

Someone will always want to talk about the horse race and some process story currently at the top of the pile. There is something more important than horses. Cows. Cows the Republicans won't inspect. Cows some Democrats have forgotten. Its what HRC could have had up her sleeve, ready for the moment when the local media decided that he'd heard enough policy and wanted to go for the jugular. "You can talk about horses, I came here to talk about cows."

On the up side, we'll find out if Senator Obama, or anyone who writes for him, has ever read Carl Sandburg.