43 Degrees, NW Wind at 14, More Rain Coming... Let's Golf!

"I don't think the heavy stuff will come down for a while..." (Carl Spackler, advising the Bishop. Caddyshack, 1980)

Hey, South Dakotans! Take a look out your window. Want to go for a walk?

Neither do I. It's rainy, cool, windy... worse than a good snowstorm! At least snow I can shovel for money and lob at Jon Hunter for fun.

But 107 golfers and a few hundred dedicated moms, dads, coaches, and friends are going for a walk in this weather right now, for the second day in a row. Day 2 of the Boys' State A golf championship is kicking off just a mile north of my house on the shores of Lake Herman. They may actually be thankful for the rain: it may have finally washed away the stink of stagnant algae that filled the creek that splits the Madison Country Club in half.

There may be some sports fans who think the golfers are just the skinny kids who aren't tough enough for football. If that thinking is out there, I would suggest going out to the Madison Country Club to watch these golfers brave the elements for state tournament glory. Oh yeah, those football boys go play their championship inside, don't they? And these golfers don't have the adrenaline of semi-organized violence to distract them from the cold, just intense concentration and long walks with heavy bags.

Swing hard, fellas. And readers, check out SDPB's coverage and photostream from the shores of Lake Herman!

SDPB updates on its Facebook page: 10 a.m. shotgun start on Lake Herman, 41°F, NW wind 20 mph. (For my Canadian readers, that's 5°C, 32 kph... 12:30 p.m. in Newfoundland.)

Dakota Rural Action Tees Off on TransCanada, Sues Over Keystone Pipeline Permit

Perusing my SiteMeter stats, I find a couple readers coming to me from the Golf Channel discussion board. Funny—I never golf...

From: LibLoather [a guy from Florida] 8/9/2008 12:04:45 AM: The environmentalist kooks are going to destroy America, if we let them. Oil companies pay millions for leases on land for oil and gas exploration, only then to spend millions more in legal fees fighting environmentalist groups. All before a drill bit touches the ground!

http://www.nbcaugusta.com/news/local/19701069.html

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From: MattsPop 8/9/2008 2:45:11 AM: Them rascals are going to cause some hassles on a pipeline I've got an investment in.

http://madvilletimes.blogspot.com/2008/03/north-dakotans-fight-transcanada.html

And now to really mess up MattsPop's golf swing:

CALGARY: Environmental groups are suing the U.S. State department over its approval of the Keystone pipeline, which is being built by Calgary-based TransCanada Corp. (TSX:TRP) and Houston firm ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP).

The State Department did not adequately look into the environmental impacts of the pipeline when awarding its presidential permit to the companies, said Mark Trechock of the Dakota Resource Council, one of the groups opposing the project.

"The State Department´s environmental impact statement was really shoddy and it needs to be redone. And of course while they´re redoing it, they should stop construction on this thing until they do it right," he said in a telephone interview from Dickinson, N.D.

The more than 3,100-kilometre pipeline will cross the eastern part of the Dakotas on its journey from Hardisty, Alta., to the U.S. Gulf Coast refining hub of Port Arthur, Texas.

Residents in the area are concerned the pipe will not be thick enough and that oil will leak onto their land.

"We had people all up and down the pipeline that were saying, `This is going to threaten our water supplies and we don´t want this,´" Trechock said.

Dakota Rural Action, based in Brookings, S.D., and the Natural Resource Defence Council, headquartered in New York, have also signed on to the complaint, filed this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. ["Environmental Groups Sue U.S. State Department over Keystone Permit," The Canadian Press, cited in Oilweek.com, 2008.08.08].

Wrecking your golf game, checking your unbridled profits, all for the sake of clean land and water—that's us libs! ;-)