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Kristi Ignores Masks and Indians, Poses with Hard Hat, Safety Glasses, Ear Protection, and Gun

With a bunch of Indians coming to the Capitol yesterday for the State of the Tribes Address, Governor Kristi Noem socially distanced herself all the way to Sioux Falls, where she demonstrated her commitment to safety at Maguire Iron:

Gov. Kristi Noem, tweet from Maguire Iron, Sioux Falls, SD, 2021.01.14.
Gov. Kristi Noem, tweet from Maguire Iron, Sioux Falls, SD, 2021.01.14.

Note to you concerned parents: Maguire Iron has an “awesome” apprenticeship program, but it apparently doesn’t require masks.

Governor Noem will follow rules requiring a hard hat and safety glasses in a factory where you can bet they aren’t going to let the Governor get anywhere near any machinery that could scar her, but she’ll be darned if she’ll wear a mask to prevent the clear and present risk of spreading or catching coronavirus among people outside her social pod.

But hey, the Snow Queen knows hardhats look much better in campaign photos than masks.

Noem also declined to wear a mask or protect vulnerable populations from the spread of coronavirus during her visit to the Alliance Center in Sioux Falls:

Gov. Kristi Noem, tweet away from Capitol during Session, 2021.01.14.
Say, what are those Indians doing in that background painting? Gov. Kristi Noem, tweet away from Capitol during Session, 2021.01.14.

But she’ll sure cover her ears when posing with a gun:

Gov. Kristi Noem, tweet of gun practice, 2021.01.14.
Ah, Kristi must have noticed those Indians behind her and gotten twitchy. Gov. Kristi Noem, tweet away from the Capitol during Session, 2021.01.14.

If she’d stuck around in Pierre, she’d have just heard those darned Indians talking about how bad coronavirus has been:

For the third day in a row, a majority of the state’s 105 legislators — many without wearing masks that are encouraged though not mandated, some behind Plexiglas shields — crammed into the House chambers. On Tuesday, Gov. Kristi Noem addressed lawmakers, and on Wednesday came remarks by recently installed state Supreme Court Chief Justice Steve Jensen.

But unlike those two addresses, which largely painted victorious pictures of the state fending off the coronavirus pandemic,Faith — whose mask dangled from his ear for part of the speech — spoke in somber tones about a deadly virus that has hit communities of color, including reservations, the hardest.

“We also watched our friends, relatives pass away,” Faith said. “And there wasn’t a darned thing we could do about it. We watched from a distance.”

While Native Americans represent at least 9% of the population in South Dakota, they account for 14% of all deaths, according to Johns Hopkins’ data. South Dakota has the fifth-highest death rate per capita in the U.S., according to a state-by-state comparison [Christopher Vondracek, “In State of the Tribes Speech, a Sharp Break from Covid-19 Optimism in South Dakota,” Worthington Globe, 2021.01.14 ].

But who wants hang around in Pierre to hear about grim threats to our livelihood exacerbated by callously inattentive government when there’s a chance to play Construction-Kristi dress-up and Annie-Oakley shoot-em-up in Sioux Falls?

28 Comments

  1. M 2021-01-15 07:31

    There is something sick about her and her guns.

  2. Mark Anderson 2021-01-15 08:17

    The Republican party now has a facist base. What do you expect from them, intelligence?

  3. Mark Anderson 2021-01-15 08:18

    The Republican party now has a fascist base. What do you expect from them, intelligence?

  4. Owen 2021-01-15 09:11

    I guess the good news is she was in South Dakota

  5. james 2021-01-15 10:22

    What kind of person sits in the legislative chambers without a mask? Especially when there have been multiple cases among legislators already.

    We’ve had a lot of news lately about lung scarring from Covid, even after more mild cases. Let’s just hope it’s not permanent. Obviously, there is still a lot to learn about the virus.

    These legislators are taking huge chances with their own health and that of others. Even if they have already had the virus… they may still be at risk.

  6. John 2021-01-15 11:13

    The republicans are fractured and about dead. The party will go the way of its 2 previous authoritarian, autocratic parties, the Federalists, and the Whigs. The modern republican party has a small core believing in the US Constitution and a democratic republic. Too many republicans believe in lies, conspiracy theories, and act like an authoritarian cult – over believing in the US Constitution.
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/has-trump-pushed-the-republican-party-to-the-breaking-point/2021/01/14/6cb4f064-56aa-11eb-a931-5b162d0d033d_story.html

  7. John 2021-01-15 11:24

    What finally got the republicans attention? The US Constitution? Nope
    The 50 states governors certifying the election results? Nope
    All the news media, even Faux News, calling the election for Biden? Nope
    The voters and electorate polls telling the republicans to move on? Nope

    Corporations pulling funding, and in some cases demanding refunds for past campaign donations? DING! DING! DING!
    It could not be clearer whom the republicans work for. It’s not you gentle voter.
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/13/what-finally-got-congressional-republicans-see-light-corporate-america/

  8. o 2021-01-15 12:06

    John, I have to disagree about your conclusion that the GOP is ” fractured and about dead.” Although, clearly, the big tent of the GOP seems disjointed and even contradictory, the last election cycle shows that even if a given candidate does not represent “my” GOP, as long as there is the “R” by the name, they will get the GOP vote. Republicans still enjoy the biggest advantage of unity: the advantage of voter/tribal allegiance.

    The whole GOP strategy of primarying any elected official who fails some new, ever more fanatic purity test (pushing the party ever more to the radical right) has not seemed to backfire because the party unites around even those more radical candidates to move forward.

  9. jerry 2021-01-15 12:52

    Now gnoem wants $900,000.00 so teachers can tell students how great we are. Don’t prove anything by actions, just tell kids how special we are. We are special too, we are special in our killing of 400,000 Americans without breaking a sweat. Special indeed “Gov. Kristi Noem has proposed $900,000 in one-time funds for curriculum to help meet her goal of teaching South Dakota’s students “why the U.S. is the most special nation in the history of the world.” Rapid City Journal 1.15.20 Why not make it a million so pom poms can be used at the rah rah?

    Teachers should do the old Bart Simpson thingy and make students write it on the blackboard 100 times each.

  10. mike from iowa 2021-01-15 13:23

    400k deaths in drumpf/noem body count will be here before your next coffee break…

    Last updated: January 15, 2021, 19:16 GMT
    United States
    Coronavirus Cases:
    23,941,585
    Deaths:
    399,535

    and they are both still clewless to the damage they have wrought.

  11. mike from iowa 2021-01-15 14:22

    Last updated: January 15, 2021, 20:19 GMT
    United States
    Coronavirus Cases:
    23,984,043
    Deaths:
    400,096

  12. leslie 2021-01-15 15:16

    Face it folks— if you have 20 speeding tickets but are selected by the GOP as a beauty queen w/no education to represent a district; then the state in DC, and accomplish nothing beyond angry stories about bad tax planning; then as photogenic governor, we will not get anything beyond posing w/beefy skinhead tattooed para-militia looking rednecks that may wish they just came from storming the Capitol.

    She literally believes Trump’s bullsheit and acts upon it. She does what she is told by her GOP minders, not for the welfare of the people of the State of South Dakota, but for the GOP’s very survival.

    The Republican party is not made up by the mindless indoctrinated thousands (by their parents, and by Rupert Murdoch’s broadcasting propaganda cabal-Fox in the USA) of SD voters. The Republican party is made up and led by BIG donors, by McConnell and his trainee Thune, by idiot followers like McCarthy, Jordan, Cotton, and corporate and fossil fuel Machiavellian billionaires. Its voters have empowered and enable militia insurrectionists that are now threatening the survival of the nation. This could be a long awful slide. Hopefully people of good conscience will withdraw blind support of that party and its hidden leaders.

    This is the quality of leadership the GOP installs to manipulate to cheat to achieve it’s corrupt goals. Noem is incompetent.

    GOP’s illegally “acting” Secretary of Homeland Security nominated by Trump, withdrawn, renominated again withdrawn again, finally Friday preceding 1.06.21 (Wolf facilitated failures in Portland OR BLM protests and both the Washington DC Lafayette Square abuse of protesters, and the Capitol insurrection):

    “I have full and complete knowledge of the contents and purpose of any and all actions taken by me since….”

    Chad F. Wolf, January 13, 2020 (faulty “Ratification” reissued January 14, 2021)

    Hamed Aleaziz
    @Haleaziz
    22h
    Lmao.

    They re-issued the memo and typed in the date…to today? Even though Wolf signed it yesterday. Twitter

    Hamed Aleaziz
    19h
    Third day on the job.

    Homeland Security
    @DHSgov
    19h
    Today Acting Secretary GAYNOR briefed @VP Pence on #DHS preparations to secure the upcoming #InaugurationCeremony

  13. M 2021-01-15 16:56

    Some states are closing their capitol buildings while others are securing them with National Guard. I wonder how Noem is going to prepare in Pierre. Will she address the crowd? Encourage more pictures?

  14. Jenny 2021-01-15 18:37

    Gov Walz is also sending 850 National Guardsmen to help out at DC.

  15. jerry 2021-01-15 20:21

    ERIC TRUMP is depressed. “Unconfirmed sources report that Eric Trump was so depressed about the family failure that he locked himself inside a closed garage for over an hour with his Tesla running.” Man, that’s rugged.

  16. leslie 2021-01-15 22:19

    Carl Segerstrom High Country News
    Jan. 8, 2021
    Five years and four days after armed militiamen took over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, a remote federal wildlife preserve in eastern Oregon, for 41 days,
    supporters of President Donald Trump stormed and briefly occupied the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6.
    It’s not hard to trace the links between Malheur and Washington; familiar insignia, instigators and ideologies fueled both anti-government actions. Extremist leaders and movement regulars from the Western U.S., including former Washington State Rep. Matt Shea, who supported the efforts from afar in Spokane, and recent U.S. Senate candidate Jo Rae Perkins, R-Ore., who joined the crowd that laid siege to the Capitol, helped fuel the melee. Backing their message, if not their tactics, was a bevy of Western legislators, who lent the movement legitimacy by supporting Trump’s baseless election-fraud claims.***

    Leaders of anti- federal movements lean into [Western] violent history and include factions that are specifically anti-Indigenous. In defending his right to graze cattle on federal land in Nevada — a claim he successfully defended at Bunkerville in 2014, when federal authorities withdrew after being outgunned by militiamen — Cliven Bundy argued that his claim to the land was more legitimate than the Southern Paiutes’ because “they lost the war.”
    This white-plus-might-makes-right sentiment is a pervasive feature of Western mythology and cowboy culture. Over the last half-century, anti-government leaders have rallied to that image as the West’s population swelled and control over its natural resources became more contested and regulated. The original Sagebrush Rebellion of the mid-to-late-1970s — which inspired the modern Bundy-led standoffs but were not nearly as paramilitary — came in response to federal public-land laws like the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, Wilderness Act and Endangered Species Act, which increasingly restricted how natural resources could be used.

    … today’s anti-government protesters — have [much] in common with the original Sagebrush Rebels. They also share an alliance with the Republican Party and a lack of accountability for breaking the law. None of the original rebels were prosecuted, and their movement faded with the election of Ronald Reagan, who publicly backed their anti-regulatory ideology. Reagan showed his support by installing Interior Secretary James Watt, who weakened many of the federal regulations they chafed against.
    FAR-RIGHT TERRORISM is the most prevalent form of terrorism in the U.S., according to the FBI. Reporting by Reveal News and Type Investigations found that right-wing extremism during the Trump administration has become more common and far more deadly. But that uptick comes with a caveat when it comes to Western extremism. During the Trump era, right-wing extremism and the militia movement shifted its focus from the federal government to other targets, like anti-fascist activists and state and local governments, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

    The explanation for this shift in target is simple: Anti-federal extremists found common cause with Trump’s presidency as he promised to “drain the swamp,” catered to racist ideologies and flirted with QAnon conspiracy theorists. He and his administration acted directly in the interest of Western factions within the right-wing extremist movement, including the Bundys. In 2018, Trump pardoned Dwight and Steven Hammond, whose imprisonment for felony arson on public lands helped spark the Oregon standoff in 2016. No attempts were made during his administration to enforce federal law ….

    WITH THE TARGET no longer on the federal government’s back, anti-government extremists in the West have aimed their tactics at left-wing protesters and at state and local governments. Throughout the Trump administration, the president’s supporters went to Portland, Oregon, ready to brawl with locals and anti-fascists, who countered their demonstrations and often obliged their violent impulses. Members of the Three Percenters vowed to support Oregon state legislators who fled the state to avoid a vote on climate change legislation in 2019, including Sen. Brian Boquist, who said that if the state police wanted to arrest him for fleeing his legislative duties, they should “send bachelors and come heavily armed.” This summer, when protests over racial inequity spread across the nation in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by police, right-wing paramilitary groups in places like Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and Olympia, Washington, showed up in combat gear, […] ostensibly to keep the peace and protect property. ***

    Yeah, right!? This is the fire Flamethrower Noem is messing with.

  17. mike Livingston 2021-01-16 21:07

    What a dueschbag! She is about subtle in her racism as her orange idol, It has been my experience that the only knowledge in history I gained in my 67 yrs, did not come from my schooling.
    Lil queenie has been indoctrinated in the lying donalds school for swamp dwellers, rule # 1 any attention is good and the more outrageous, dishonest, and underhanded the better. rule 2 always smile while you are lying through your teeth,

  18. RST member from St. Francis 2021-01-17 06:47

    I see in the Maguire Iron picture The Noem is missing the Grabber in Chief with placement of her hands as a reminder. Nevertheless, as tribal leaders said let’s get along, The Noem got along by leaving town. This intentional in your face move plays to her base. Tribal leaders should have sent their janitors to try to clean up the mess the 1 party state has created for tribal members in the state. Voter suppression and gerrymandering, the PUC ignoring the science pointing out the scorched earth policies of the 1 party state and most disturbing the lack of acknowledgement of tribal leadership and more importantly tribal members existing in the state. 2022 will come up fast hopefully changes in leadership will come about.

  19. mike from iowa 2021-01-17 08:50

    Dems are looking at a bill to require independent boards draw all political districts in all states to end gerrymandering.

    3353 more bodies for drumpf/noem to count Saturday January 16th. 405,266 total have died because iof mostly wingnut incompetency.

  20. Mark Anderson 2021-01-17 09:14

    Hey guys and gals, Kristi is happy, Monday North Dakota is mask free and can catch back up to South Dakota in covid deaths. Hurrah, freedom rings for the Dakota’s.

  21. leslie 2021-01-17 10:00

    W. VA. Gov Justice (R) just said (CBS Face the Nation) Krisit Noem is sitting on her hands failing to execute vaccinations, essentially. Thank you for calling out do-nothing governors during this pandemic emergency. He didn’t name the slackers. He condemned Kristi’s fatal politics.

    Deep southern drawl and all, y’all.

  22. mike from iowa 2021-01-18 14:03

    1730 bodies counted yesterday, Sunday the 17th.

  23. mike from iowa 2021-01-19 18:16

    1441 bodies counted Monday.

    Last updated: January 20, 2021, 00:12 GMT
    United States
    Coronavirus Cases:
    24,788,713
    Deaths:
    411,160

  24. mike from iowa 2021-01-20 18:55

    drumpf/noem body count…

    Last updated: January 21, 2021, 00:50 GMT
    United States
    Coronavirus Cases:
    24,987,404
    Deaths:
    415,543

    2770 bodies counted Tuesday.

  25. mike from iowa 2021-01-21 10:17

    4367 bodies turned up yesterday for the count. The count surpassed 16 million cases and 416k deaths already today. Hopefully competent, thoughtful, science based experts can slow this freight train down.

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