There are at least a trillion reasons to protest Donald Trump’s visit to Sioux Falls. But while Trump balloons the deficit, he’s canceling Friday’s Balloons over Downtown Sioux Falls:
“We just got news that this Friday, September 7, we will not be allowed to fly within 30 miles of the airport due to President Trump’s visit,” said the Sioux Falls Ballooning Association on Facebook. “That means we are not allowed to fly in Sioux Falls and most of the surrounding area. With that being said, we are very sorry to have to cancel this event.”
As of Tuesday morning, the most liked responses on Facebook to the announcement echoed commenter Ann Hoffman: “I’d rather see the balloons” [link added; Jeremy Fugelberg, “Trump Visit to Sioux Falls Deflates Balloons over DTSF Event,” that Sioux Falls paper, 2018.09.04].
Donald Trump isn’t popping Tim Bjorkman’s balloon. South Dakota’s Democratic candidate for U.S. House is perfectly counterprogramming the $5,000 Kristi-Don photo op and PAC trick with a public picnic at the Terrace Park band shell:
Not invited to the political rally in Sioux Falls on Friday?
That’s OK. Tim Bjorkman invites you to join us at Terrace Park for a free weekend kickoff, beginning at 5 p.m. Friday, September 7! We will serve food and soft drinks, and live entertainment is being planned as well.
The best part? It’s not $500 per plate — and there will be no $5,000 per person photo-ops, either! It’s all free. You may, if you wish, donate to the Tim Bjorkman for Congress campaign.
Photos with Tim will be available — and they won’t cost you $5,000, either! They’re free, too!
There are some benches and picnic tables at the bandshell, but bring lawn chairs and blankets and be ready to have a good time.
Remember, you’re invited to this PAC-free, people’s picnic! [Tim Bjorkman for Congress, “Rally for All at Terrace Park,” campaign website, 2018.09.04]
Team Trump and Team Noem are keeping the exact location of their exclusive event secret; even if we could find it, Trump and Noem wouldn’t listen to us regular folks, anyway. The most perfect demonstration of contempt for the rot at the top may be for balloonists, farmers, civili libertarians, minorities, women, and everyone else trodden upon by this elitist Republican regime to rally with Bjorkman at Terrace Park and flood social media with photos of themselves standing proudly and freely next to a real man of the people.
No word yet on whether Bjorkman’s Republican opponent will include an expensive photo op with die Trümpster on The Dusty Trail….
Sioux Falls can only stand so much hot air and with Trump coming we’ve exhausted our quota so the balloons must wait for another day. Sad.
I heard about this yesterday at Tim’s SF campaign headquarters while stuffing envelopes. I thought it was great and we’re definitely planning on going. So, I ordered four 25inch BabyTrump balloons from Amazon. I think I will run the risk of being arrested. :-)
Any word yet on the possibility of a sign waving protest?
Way to go, Tim Bjorkman. Excellent
I wonder if Kristi Noem is “Individual 16” in Duncan Hunter’s indictment. The more he fights his charges, the more likely it is that we will find out the identity of the congresswoman he was diddling.
I think we should stage a peaceful and civil demonstration as soon as we find out where the fundraiser is located. But sadly many of my fellow Minnehaha Dems are against such a protest. They claim it will only bring attention to Trump’s presence, but isn’t that already guaranteed? Won’t the press tells us all about Trump being in SD regardless of a protest or not? For at some point, Dems in South Dakota need to stop being too cautious and sanitized in their approach. We need to start standing for something and be proud of who and what we are!
It’s also sad that the balloons can’t fly too, which suggests to me that the event might be at the Minnehaha Country Club (?)…. Plus the balloons, many of them having been manufactured at Raven, which is my guess, are symbolic of a company that was founded during World War II to help defeat the Axis Powers…. So one can only ask, what the does the balloons’ suppression really symbolize but an attempt to allow the fascists to win and as Americans we should not want that to happen….
#LetTheBalloonsFlyLetFreedomRingOrFloat! ;-)
Mr. Claussen, Comrade trump wants to abolish protests like the dictator he is becoming.
“President Trump has long derided the mainstream media as the “enemy of the people” and lashed out at NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem. On Tuesday, he took his attacks on free speech one step further, suggesting in an interview with a conservative news site that the act of protesting should be illegal.”
So there ya go, he wants us all to shut up and wear brown.
Cory needs be careful as well. Drumpf is talking about changing libel laws so he can go after Bob Woodward and his new book. He wants to make flipping defendants a crime as well.
Obama came to help a school.
Trump is coming to help a fool.
mfi – Trump is apparently unaware that elected officials are essentially incapable of being libeled – having VOLUNTEERED to live in the public eye and be subject to ridicule as part of the job. Long established legal precedent @ “political speech”. In fact, by opining that Mr. Woodward is a “Dem operative” he has immunized Mr. Woodward even further.
Mike Pence seems to give a shout out to Democrats in this op-ed in the New York Times today. Mikey is the only dude in the world who uses the word lodestar in speech after speech. Comrade trump says he is a bad boy for trying to pop his balloon.
“The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.
Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.
We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.” Anonymous opinion from a senior White House insider New York Times 09/05/2018
Bah zing!! Looks like a coup may be developing. What a perfect time for it as well, with Comrade trump mugging it up with Comrade NOem, two peas in a pod, out here in a grift scam in South Dakota.
Lodestar says “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration
I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” New York Times 09/05/2018
Intrigue, oh hell ya. Thrills and spills and hospital bills, release the beast.
Jerry,
I believe it was retired Republican Senator Gordon Humphrey from New Hampshire, who first called the Trumpsters a bunch of “brownshirts.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ogvekAwb0
We could use more of that type of Humprhreyian ‘Profiles in Courage’ by our Republican friends in Congress today.
Indeed Mr. Claussen, when we are now governed by a shadow government of the unelected employees, we are no longer a democracy, we are a banana republic. We know that the Veterans Administration is being run by a shadow group that was put together to dismantle it. So, the whole thing is a fraud. Which leads me to think that all of the the laws that have been signed are not valid if the guy signing them is unfit for office. Shadow’s making decisions for us is not a very good thing. From the PBS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TiR2r0gdNw
More beeeeeeeeezarre Kremlin Annex (thanks Mike) by the day.
These 2 events are a perfect example of the difference between Democrats and Pootiepublicans.
Nick, I don’t think Team Bjorkman would mind if people showed up at the picnics with signs and waved and got lots of attention.
JKC, your party friends who oppose a protest are wrong. You are right: Trump gets attention no matter what. Now that Angela Kennecke is back on the beat, she’ll be running all over town her blue dress, chasing Trump as doggedly as she chased illegal out-of-state circulators.
A protest is only a plus for Democrats tomorrow. Imagine the optics of Republicans paying $5000 for pictures with the tyrant in a secret location while 5,000 people all gather around Tim Bjorkman for a selfie… with Kristi Q’s awesome balloons in the background. Friday is the time to put people power on display, to show that people are willing to gather and defy our incompetent dictator Trump.
Of course, I’ll be busy here in Aberdeen with my own campaign, enjoying a house party at 411 11th Ave SE, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. If you can’t make Tim’s party, come to mine!
Absolutely, back in 1992 when then VP Daniel Quayle came to SF to campaign for the GOP, Democrats protested his presence. In fact, a KELO story on the protest zeroed in on one of the two co-Executive Directors of the South Dakota Democratic Party at the time who was holding a sign in protest. Keep in mind that that co-Executive along with his cohort went on that year to get enough Democrats elected to the State Senate, inorder, for the Dems to take over the Senate for the first time with a sitting Republican governor. Fast forward to today, and Dems have become to timid, to scared, and lacking a general understanding of what it means to be a political party and lacking a true strategy with the help of an effective GOTV to win November as well. For the unwillingness to protest speaks to anunwillingness to fight for something that you believe in; and the only way I can answer that, is that some really do not believe anything other than to advance their own political standing.
I cannot imagine how bizarrely and/or long Pootie’s Puppet will rage on at this event. I think Rep. Noem will disappear into the shrubbery, maybe having learned how to hide from former press sec, Sean Sphincter. It ought be entertaining, and I hope the Democrats make it even more so.
The Democratic Party missed an opportunity to seize the spotlight.