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Noem Defends Domestic Terrorism Against Teachers and School Boards

One reason Kristi Noem loses court cases is that she doesn’t really understand the First Amendment.

On her way out the door to another out-of-state campaign trip, our part-time Governor Twitter-whined that United States Attorney General Merrick Garland is using “intimidation tactics against parents who speak up at School Board mtgs” and “exercise 1st Amend. rights…”:

Kristi Noem, Tweet, 2021.10.05.
Kristi Noem, Tweet, 2021.10.05.

Corruption is success, violence is free speech, enforcing the law is intimidation—good grief, the Newspeak from the South Dakota Republican Party never ends.

Attorney General Garland is directing the FBI and U.S. Attorneys to look into the violence, threatened and real, that teachers and school boards across the country are experiencing, largely from people inspired by leaders like Noem and language like Noem’s that tell them schools are the enemy and masks and vaccines aren’t necessary to fight coronavirus:

In a six-page letter to President Biden last week, the National School Boards Association detailed instances of threats and acts of violence (mostly related to mask mandates) at school board meetings in states including California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Texas and Virginia.

It says such conduct — whether at local meetings or threats sent through mail and social media — endangers students and educators and disrupts school district operations, and notes the growing threat of “extremist hate organizations showing up at school board meetings.” As NPR’s Anya Kamenetz has reported, these protests are increasingly being coordinated by national groups like Let Them Breathe.

“As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes,” the school boards association wrote, asking for federal help investigating and preventing them [Rachel Treisman, “The Justice Department Will Address Threats Against School Officials and Staff,” NPR, 2021.10.05].

How topsy-turvy can Noem’s conception of the First Amendment be when she thinks people standing on a highway protesting a polluting pipeline are rioters and terrorists but cranks getting physical at school board meetings and punching teachers over pandemic precautions are engaged in free speech?

As Attorney General Garland makes clear, we have an obligation to defend educators, the law, and American values from this kind of blatant domestic terrorism:

“Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values,” wrote Attorney General Garland. “Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety” [United States Department of Justice, press release, 2021.10.04].

The Justice Department is not trying to intimidate any parents who chill any free speech. The Justice Department is actually helping schools distinguish protected First Amendment activity from illegal threats:

…The Justice Department will also create specialized training and guidance for local school boards and school administrators. This training will help school board members and other potential victims understand the type of behavior that constitutes threats, how to report threatening conduct to the appropriate law enforcement agencies, and how to capture and preserve evidence of threatening conduct to aid in the investigation and prosecution of these crimes.

Threats of violence against school board members, officials, and workers in our nation’s public schools can be reported by the public to the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center (NTOC) via its national tip line (1-800-CALL-FBI) and online through the FBI website (http://fbi.gov/tips). To ensure that threats are communicated to the appropriate authorities, NTOC will direct credible threats to FBI field offices, for coordination with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and law enforcement partners as appropriate. Reporting threats of violence through NTOC will help the federal government identify increased threats in specific jurisdictions as well as coordinated widespread efforts to intimidate educators and education workers [USDOJ, 2021.10.04].

Attorney General Garland is defending the Constitution and public education. Governor Noem is only fanning the flames of the ignorance and thuggery that is apparently her party’s last resort for retaining power.

61 Comments

  1. O

    Did our Governor just engage in riot boosting?

  2. SuFuMatt

    The level of acceptance society has recently developed for hating thy neighbor is shocking. I don’t care if it is protected by the constitution, it is unChristian to threaten strangers. Not a legal scholar, but not sure threats actually are protected, though… Meanness to school board members, teachers, store clerks, etc. is becoming socially acceptable. Sad.

  3. militant.

    We all know Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is a racist but now my home state has gone from being America’s laughing stock to becoming a co-conspirator in hate crimes. Noem has simply become a pinup for the Kochs and boycotting South Dakota is apparently the only language the Republican Party seems to understand.

    The American Left poses no violent threat to the United States while the hate-filled white wing of the Republican Party always will.

  4. sx123

    Ever been to a high school basketball game and seen how embarrassingly violent parents can get?
    It’s the Jerry Springer show everywhere now, and Noem thinks it’s a right to be defended?
    If you can’t argue your point and convince with logic without going ape, you don’t have much of a point, imo.

  5. Donald Pay

    Thanks, Merrick Garland. It’s about time that parents stop acting like kids in a mosh pit. Those people should be ashamed of themselves.

    So, in my town a few years ago, there was a group of black folks who attended school board meetings, got very vocal in shouting people down, preventing the school board from conducting their meetings where they were discussing whether or not there should be police EROs in the high schools. They wanted police out of the schools. Several of the board members and the general public reported intimidation, but no violence.

    See, I think if some Native parents showed up at a school board meeting and started acting like the white hooligans act, Noem would try to put them in the slammer. With Noem, it’s all about the race of the people protesting. If they are white hooligans, Noem gives them the right to act up. Anybody else would go to jail. I expect the skin color of the people doing the protesting is what concerns Noem most.

    I was a school board member in Rapid City. I think the public has a right to make their views known. There are ample opportunities for anyone to comment. It crosses a line when folks on one side of an issue use Nazi-style tactics to shut down rational discussion. Noem is a Nazi, so clearly she supports the Nazi tactics of violence and intimidation, at least if it’s the White Nationalists and white ignoramuses. There has to be decorum and process, no intimidation or violence in public meetings and public discussions. If Noem can’t agree with that, she is violating her oath of office.

  6. cibvet

    Don’t blame the puppet (noem) for being a clown, blame the people who voted to bring in this circus. She is there because she is easily manipulated to follow the other pubs’ instructions and lacking any original idea of her own, it works well for the puppet masters.

  7. mike from iowa

    Magat Noem lies again? I don’t believe it.

  8. Vi Kingman

    It’s about time the DOJ goes after these knuckle-draggers. Obviously Noem hasn’t watched the news to see the threats that school board members have faced from these Trump morons.
    In Noem’s defense she is so busy flying around the country on our dime she doesn’t have time to watch the news-just get enough information to send out a stupid Tweet like this.That’s on little Ian Fury.

  9. Allen Jeris

    Domestic terrorism? Those words together are losing its meaning. If you want your kid to wear a mask, ok. But stop treating everyone like they are a walking infectious disease. No, violence and threats shouldn’t be used but, that should be dealt with at a local level. Not by the Federal Bureau of Intimidation.

  10. David Newquist

    There was a brief time in the 1960s when there was a rash of incidents in which school board meetings were disrupted and teachers were menaced in their classrooms. A number of states passed insult-and-abuse laws to protect schools and teachers. As the laws were written in ways that seemed to restrict free speech, they were largely repealed. But school administrations found that disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace laws already in the books applied to the circumstances. In one incident, a woman burst into a classroom and assailed a teacher and the school. The teacher and the school filed criminal disruption and civil defamation suits against the woman and won a hefty judgements against her, which were widely noted in the press. That seemed to put an end to the harassing incidents. The judgements made a distinction between registering criticism and complaints in an appropriate manner and abusive and threatening disruptions. But those distinctions are beyond Noem’s mentaller, ability to grasp.

  11. Donald Pay

    Domestic terrorism has been identified as a major national security issue the US faces, but apparently Allen Jeris gets all politically correct about using those words. It would be nice if all of this could be handled locally, as Jeris says, but some of the misinformation and tactics used by these jerks are organized across the country. Sure, every jerk who gets up at a school board meeting spouting misinformation and threatening violence isn’t a domestic terrorist, but investigators are finding lots of connections to the websites where these jerks are getting misinformed and suggesting tactics, and the people running those websites have deep connections to domestic terrorism. Some of them are jerks who were part of the January 6 terrorist plot to overthrow American democracy. Some are run by foreign intelligence agencies.

    i’m glad Garland is looking into this.

  12. Allen Jeris

    Donald Pay-
    You can use any words you want. For me it has become a watered down along with the word racist. Seems like if anyone disagrees with… let’s say masks, vaccines, ect. One is labeled a slew of words that have lost some of their meaning over the years. It seems as if we are transitioning to an “authoritarian” country nowadays.

  13. Just say it: radical christianic terrorism.

  14. happy camper

    She is dictatorial and what Trump calls a killer. I’m told she’ll gut you like a fish with a smile on her face, and while many in the Republican establishment don’t like her, nobody is willing to challenge her. She doesn’t represent South Dakota values, conservative values, she represents her own. Trump and Noem are not people to aspire to but yes, too many people look up to them as successful, but their behavior is brutal, that’s not Christian, or love thy neighbor. It’s disappointing that no reasonable Republicans will step in the ring with her. She’s vicious and doesn’t play by the rules, but that will be the reason to vote for the incumbent. Someone who wants to use the power of the state to benefit South Dakota, not Noem’s endless ambitions and self promotion. But Sutton is probably the best Democrats can present, which wasn’t good enough or what the voters wanted, so I fear we will have her for at least another term unless the Republicans decide to support another candidate in the primary, very unlikely, or two Republicans run as Independents. We need a reasonable person back in charge Doug Daugaard could push her out if he still had some life in him, the drive, I guess he’s too old or disinterested, doesn’t want to be bothered, doesn’t want to fear being beat by Noem, afraid of the far right Tea Party MAGA types. The Republicans have lost their spine and tossed away their belief system the Dakota War College hasn’t even covered the story of Corey LaCreepO. Stand up for the right thing!!!

  15. Allen, teachers and school boards are trying to deal with the pandemic at the local level. Well-organized groups are disrupting schools and meetings with violence. Those groups are using force and intimidation to make people afraid and achieve political ends. That’s terrorism. It’s being perpetrated by our fellow citizens: that’s domestic terrorism.

    Don’t play word games: the main point here is that Attorney General Garland is trying to enforce the law—the First Amendment does not protect death threats and the use of violence to achieve political ends—and Governor Noem and you are misrepresenting the government’s actions, the violent agitators’ actions, and the First Amendment.

  16. bearcreekbat

    Even according to anti-mask and anti-vaccine apologist, Kristi Noem’s recent TV presentation, 90% of folks infected by COVID and hospitalized in the ICU were not vaccinated.

    https://dakotafreepress.com/2021/09/22/more-noem-logic-refusing-vaccine-leads-to-more-coronavirus-and-icu-admission-so-wash-your-hands/

    The SD Dep’t of Health also reports that the COVID infection rate has climbed significantly over that last few weeks and continues to climb.

    https://doh.sd.gov/COVID/Dashboard.aspx

    This is information from our apologist right wing governor and a State agency under her control. More objective information suggests that the infectatious effect of folks that refuse masks and vaccinations may be even more significant.

    Whichever source one believes, whether from Noem folks that are known to be anti-vax anti-mask apologists or iother sources, these statistics suggest it is factually accurate to consider each unvaccinated and unmasked individual to be “a walking infectious disease.” Indeed, since even vaccinated folks can carry the COVID infections, it seems that to “stop treating everyone like they are a walking infectious disease” is like the proverbial ostrich that puts one’s head in the sand to avoid seeing danger.

  17. chris

    IPC in Sioux Falls just added a new room onto the north side of the building. It is windowless, with pre-cast concrete for the walls. I have no idea what it could be for. O is correct about the riot boosting.

  18. Allen Jeris

    Cory
    Your the king of word games. I agree that violence and intimidation should not be tolerated. But we don’t need to sit here and comply and except the argument made by one side. We are currently trending towards an authoritarian government with government agencies playing into partisan politics. Thats were your domestic terrorism is at.

    bearcreekbat-
    You can wear a mask and have that false sense of security. Plus I got both two doses of COVID vaccine. I predicted this back in May with the vaccine being leaky and essentially, had a growing concern about antibody dependent enhancement. Do an honest literature review without using google. There is a lot of studies that give different answers to the same question. The answers are not always clear in medicine, especially when politics sticks it’s nose where it doesn’t belong.

  19. Donald Pay

    It’s good to know we’ve got Jeris on on speech patrol today. I’m glad he allows me to use whatever words I want. That’s mighty white of him.

    Jeris comments: “Seems like if anyone disagrees with… let’s say masks, vaccines, ect. One is labeled a slew of words that have lost some of their meaning over the years.” No one is calling dumb and soon to be infected people domestic terrorists here, Allen, but when they elevate their stupidity into disrupting meetings and preventing a discussion, that’s when their speech infringes on others’ rights. And when they threaten and intimidate others, that’s when they start crossing into criminality. And if that criminality is organized with the purpose of trying to terrorize other citizens and authorities into bending to their will through use of those threats and intimidation tactics, that is domestic terrorism. Have I made that clear enough for you?

    Speaking of transitioning to an authoritarian country, shouting down citizens and disrupting government meeting, trying to manipulate the meaning of words into mush are classic tactics used by the the Nazis and Communists.

  20. ArloBlundt

    Well…she wants to create total chaos in local schools throughout the state. She believes she can win reelection amidst this chaos.

  21. Jezz Cory, why doesn’t someone say to Ms. Noem like is shouted to people at school boards, “I know where you live”. Just a statement of fact. Depending on your tone of voice, neutral would be good, but would be hard, and of course you’d have to have have your hand out pointing your finger without your thumb up of course, you don’t want to suggest the second amendment, so keep it to the side. Two different worlds again of course, one reasonable and proper and the other wingnut crazy. Which brings me to Allen who seems to want school boards left unprotected. They were the ones who asked for protection in the first place. You can look it up.

  22. Bonnie B Fairbank

    Oh, my. Kristi Lynn has opened her ignorant and badly educated yawp once again and spouted utter bullpaddies. She needs a huge, steaming mug of STFU. Could she not do us all a big favor and die from stupidity?

    One of the funniest things I’ve heard in my life came from a friend in Rapid, when we were discussing Our Esteemed Governor’s “advanced” education. She said that Kristi Lynn had online degrees in Poodle Grooming and Wilton Cake Decorating. My friend has double masters in mining engineering and geology from Mines and Tech, which is NOT a charm school.

  23. bearcreekbat

    Allen Jeris, I could be wrong but I suspect when a school board requires masks or vaccinations it is intended to slow or reduce the spread of Covid. I doubt very much that such policies are designed to create an authoritarian government. Rather such policies seem to be an iadmitting imperfect, but otherwise appropriate means to try to protect our children from being infected by some unvaccinated or unmasked individual.

    I am glad you have been vaccinated as that has been shown by empirical evidence to statistically reduce the chance of you spreading the COVID virus to others. As for wearing a mask to obtain a sense of security, I am sure that some get just that. To many, however, wearing a mask is not to get a sense of personal security, rather, it is reduce the chances of inadvertently spread COVID.

    Ultimately, you are correct that one can find multiple opinions with research. The issue becomes which particular research to accept, the information you want to hear that makes you feel good, or the information that appears to have the acceptance of most scientists, researchers, medical personnel, and government agencies. Of course, either source might be wrong, but it would seem the odds weigh heavily in favor of sources more universally accepted as credible than the opinions of aberrant sources, regardless of one’s individual wishes or preferences. Going with the abberrant views seems analogous to betting on the one card needed to fill an inside straight versus all the rest of the deck. Personally I would rather play the hand that wins most often than the long shot.

    The people terrorizing government officials and school board members appear to be the same people that are betting on the long shot that is consistent with what they wish to believe rather than statistical reality, namely, that kids are in much danger of being infected if the school doesn’t require vaccines, masks, or other accepted means to protect children. Trouble is, such a view seems like the so-called “wish sandwich” described by the Blues Brothers.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NepkGHEd2B0

  24. Allen Jeris

    So many comments that I don’t even know were to begin.

    Donald Pay using the classic race card again. So boring that I stopped reading after that.

    With the comment:
    “Personally I would rather play the hand that wins most often than the long shot“. I don’t care about winning I only care about the the unfiltered, honest truth. I’ve been a medical provider for quite some time and we can agree to disagree. In general population everyday settings, masks cause more harm then good so I’m not interested in wearing a diaper over my face.

  25. Gosh Allen Jeris, a medical provider than doesn’t wear a diaper over their face. You obviously haven’t been in many operations have you? In general population setting everyday settings, masks cause more harm than good. Any other disinformation to share? See I was very careful not to call you a liar but since you want the unfiltered, honest truth you are one. It’s easy to prove, just go to the mayo site, the CDC site, anywhere on God’s green earth other than foxie news the proper gander site. Have a nice evening.

  26. kj trailer

    Mr. Jeris, I pity anyone who has ever gone to you for medical help if you honestly have such an anti-science, anti-medicine viewpoint.
    The first thing that tells me that you can’t be taken with even a smidge of seriousness is that you’re so incredibly ridiculous as to call a face mask a “diaper”. No even remotely intelligent person calls it that. That’s a hardcore rightwing talking point.
    If you are pooping or pissing out of your pie hole, I suggest you call an ACTUAL medical professional, because you have a serious problem going on there.
    Intimidation at shool board meetings, yelling at and picketing children who are going to school, sharing home addresses of school board members with violent anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers, and death threats against school board members and teachers–all these ARE domestic terrorism. Just because you don’t like it when people call a spade a spade, doesn’t mean it’s not a spade.
    There are no legitimate medical or scientific studies which say that not vaccinating for Covid is as good as vaccinating. Stop with this. Every hospital chain that puts up numbers shows that almost all of their current Covid patients have been unvaccinated. Does the Lancet tell you to not get vaccinated?
    If you want to put up rightwing talking points, Dakota Free Press isn’t really the place for you. Cory deals with the truth, not Newsmax propaganda.

  27. mike from iowa

    masks cause more harm then good so I’m not interested in wearing a diaper over my face.

    Would you prefer a sheet or a body bag over your face?

    Who says masks cause more harm than good?

    This isn’t all about you and what you want.

  28. mike from iowa

    She said that Kristi Lynn had online degrees in Poodle Grooming and Wilton Cake Decorating.

    Not satisfied with having to obtain 2 separate degrees, she streamlined the process and settled for advanced Wilton Poodle Decorating. Then she went straight to Fake Noize studio to tell the world she laid another egg.

  29. Bonnie B Fairbank

    mike from iowa; I wish I’d thought of the “streamlined process.” Which means Kristi Lynn has never really thought about anything and assumed someone else would “make it so.”

  30. O

    People do not run for School Boardsto implement “authoritarian regimes… (although Rapid City may make me eat those words). Looking out for public health is not government overreach; it is the true and appropriate role of government. Making that partisan has made the GOP a death cult and turned the Bill of Rights into a suicide compact.

    I would also add this to the discussion: the vast majority of these violent protesters go home to school aged children. When you see a display like those we have seen, ask what the children in those homes are like in school. Teachers – especially female teachers – are disrespected more and more as the GOP/Conservatives/MAGA keep pushing the school as evil mantra, and somehow rebelling against school is a noble act.

    The GOP/Conservatives/MAGA have not thought about their end game. What happens when they bring an end to public education?

  31. Porter Lansing

    OK, whom ever you are. You’re not a medical provider and your speech and prose suggests you didn’t finish high school. In fact, my research shows no person in USA with the name Allen Jerris. You’re the MAGA living in Jesus, GA, huh?

  32. Allen Jeris

    Mark Anderson- Guess anything that anyone says you disagree with is “disinformation”. If you could just try to actually review literature from multiple medical journals and not just take the first thing you read as fact it might actually give you better insight.
    CDC has been wrong so many times and there are actual physicians in this country with a backbone willing to treat individuals with drugs with great safety profiles that are not FDA approved showing great efficacy. To limit my practice to only accepting what the cdc or Mayo has to say would be a disservice. When you scream “proof” after googling what your looking for from only 1or 2 sources and don’t consider alternative variables, you start being a pawn. Ask anyone that knows anything about research articles. Nothing is truth, it’s all about collective evidence and how far it tips the scale in one direction compared to the other.

    mike from iowa-
    Medical scientists, Doctors, ect. Sure you will have the same professionals on the other side. Welcome to medicine.

    I prefer god given air over my face. And if you don’t like, deal with it.
    It sure as hell is not about you.
    Judging by what I see as I go out and live my life, most people are doing the same.

  33. grudznick

    Your god, Mr. mike, does not give air even there in Iowa where you live and breathe the pig stench of stockyards. Air is just a science thing, which you would know if you were a scientist and #4Science like grudznick and Dr. McT are.

    Mr. O, some people do indeed run for the boards of schools for many reasons insaner than most.

  34. Porter Lansing

    Mark Zuckerberg is under fire for profiling people with limited scope, like this Jeris, and feeding them disinformation.

    The longer they stay engaged, the more volume and the more extreme the posts become.

    Multiply that by tens of millions of MAGA’s and Facebook’s increased advertising rates have made Zuckerberg a multi-billionaire, by spreading lies.

    The CIA has documented that an enormous amount of this disinformation, aimed at the gullible, is coming from Putin’s cyber warfare team.

  35. Genie

    Allen, Cory is not the king of word games, but the King of our blog. He is truthful and honest which is more than I can say for you. Medical Provider, that’s a play on words. No “real” Medical person would say masks do more harm than good. Go start your own blog.

  36. grudznick

    Ms. Genie, “our” blog, as you say, belongs to the blog boy, Mr. H. I would not use the term “our” for the blog here upon which we all do our bloggings. I’m just sayin…

  37. Ben Cerwinske

    I’m guessing Allen is one of those chiropractors who think they understand how viruses work.

  38. Porter Lansing

    What say we give the new guy Jerris Allen the benefit of the doubt and encourage him to post to his pea pickin’ MAGA heart’s desire.

    Tolerance and enough rope is a virtue.

    Kristi Noem – You Lie Like A Trump!
    No American is being pursued by Merrick Garland for “speaking up” in a school board meeting.
    However, if you intimidate and threaten elected officials (like yourself) you’ll receive no quarter from Joe “Steady” Biden’s administration.
    Got it?

  39. grudznick

    Mr. Cerwinske, do not under estimate the bone-cracker caucuses. The Doctors Deutsch, Munster, and Monroe still pull many appendages in the legislatures.

  40. happy camper

    Kristi will gut you like a fish and enjoy it. These old Republicans are scared of her. They can’t even pretend to live up to their own values. They are disgraceful and pathetic. They talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.

  41. Donald Pay

    So, Allen, the big B.Ss-er follows CDC guidelines. And here I thought he was pretending to be a big criminal, like Arlo Guthrie in Alice’s restaurant. Next he’ll be telling us he got arrested for littering, and creating a public nuisance.

    The CDC advises that mask wearing outside is not required. They do advise wearing a mask inside, particularly for the unvaccinated. If it’s inside in a crowded area you should wear a mask, even if vaccinated, to protect against the Delta variant. In my community, we have a mask mandate for public areas that are inside, eg., stores, etc., but not outside. I follow the rules, because I’m no fool, no siree.

  42. grudznick

    Mr. Pay, you are a rule breaker, not a rule follower. grudznick knows, he always knows!

  43. Well Allen Jervis, I do read many sources, God’s green earth and all. Oh, and I type, not scream, but I’ll still take the CDC over you any day of the week. About your collective evidence, why not list a couple to enlighten everyone? Have a nice day, at least you’ll never have worms.

  44. By the way Allen, I just read a good study out of Yale that points out among the unvaccinated an infection can reoccur within 3 months. So all those lying losers like Randie Paul who wail about their natural immunity are full of it. He claimed to be in medicine too.

  45. ArloBlundt

    Grudznick..take a stiff jolt of brandy and go to bed…you’re rambling again and have lost the point..

  46. bearcreekbat

    In all fairness, there are several opinion pieces available online that argue masks do more harm than good just as Allen Jaris stated. On the other hand, here is a link to a recent study from Stanford Medicene and Yale University that comes to the opposite conclusion.

    A large, randomized trial led by researchers at Stanford Medicine and Yale University has found that wearing a surgical face mask over the mouth and nose is an effective way to reduce the occurrence of COVID-19 in community settings.

    . . .

    The findings were released Sept. 1 on the Innovations for Poverty Action website, prior to their publication in a scientific journal, because the information is considered of pressing importance for public health as the pandemic worsens in many parts of the world.

    “We now have evidence from a randomized, controlled trial that mask promotion increases the use of face coverings and prevents the spread of COVID-19,” said Stephen Luby, MD, professor of medicine at Stanford. “This is the gold standard for evaluating public health interventions. Importantly, this approach was designed be scalable in lower- and middle-income countries struggling to get or distribute vaccines against the virus.”

    Luby shares senior authorship with Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, PhD, professor of economics at Yale, of a paper describing the research. The lead authors are Ashley Styczynski, MD, MPH, an infectious disease fellow at Stanford; Jason Abaluck, PhD, professor of economics at Yale; and Laura Kwong, PhD, a former postdoctoral scholar at Stanford who is now an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the University of California-Berkeley.

    https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-masks-covid-19.html

    I confess to my personal lack of knowledge or expertise in this areas. And I have never done any actual research myself. The individuals identified in this particular study strike me as more knowledgable and credible than either the opinion writers I found that make the opposit argument or Allen Jaris (no offense intended). If for some unknown reason the researchers working with Stanford and Yale are telling some great big lie, then I have been fooled by them.

  47. Porter Lansing

    Two psychological factors are leading the vaccine hesitant, the most.

    They don’t trust liberals and they’ve previously been ridiculed as being “stupid”.

    Interested? The story is within the link, below.

    – “Affinity bias” is the common tendency to believe, or agree with, the ideas of people you like or admire, and to discount or disagree with those you dislike.

    — “Knew-it-all-the-time” bias, the tendency to look back on complicated events or situations after they’ve been resolved and believe that you understood them better than was actually the case.

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brainsnacks/201404/the-real-reason-we-believe-what-we-believe

  48. Mark, if we stormed into the Governor’s Office or interrupted one of her campaign appearances or photo ops the way the thugs targeted by AG Garland are doing at schools, Noem would call in the SDHP and the National Guard to tear gas us and haul us all to jail.

  49. O makes a vitally important and scary point: the thugs for whom Noem and Jeris are making excuses are affirming for a generation of kids that ignorance and violence are not only acceptable but admirable. We are raising a generation of brutish bullies. That’s the real foundation of the authoritarianism Noem and Jeris are creating.

  50. Masks work. Vaccines work. The Sanford updates every day show the vast majority of covid cases are the unvaccinated holdouts. The people for whom Noem is making excuses, the people she’s counting on to vote for her, can’t win an argument on the facts, so they have to resort to shouting, insults, and thuggery.

  51. Allen Jeris

    Mark anderson-
    I have already posted plenty from previous posts.

    Everyone has the ability to trust who they want. I for one don’t like politicized medicine.

    Even Liberal house and senate members don’t believe this mask bs and are putting on a show. Just look at Tlaib comments from the other day. It’s a joke.

    I could sit her all day posting research articles all day but doubtful anyone here would take the time to read them. I’m skeptical, big pharma is for the money and isn’t here to save us, and they are heavy influences in the government.

  52. cibvet

    Some people sit around all day ingesting false information and then come on this blog trying to be a relevant nonconformist.

  53. mike from iowa

    Bonnie B Fairbank, when you and I eliminate work, we are efficient. When Noem streamlines programs, she is lazy.

  54. Well Allen Jervis, keep your mask off and keep mingling, nothing bad will happen. I just read a great research article, but like you why would I want to share it? It was about colleges in a state that kept their rate so much lower than the state average, but apart from that I’m really glad you don’t trust Republican politicized medicine, although it can be fun, just look at Montana, hilarious. Next time you need an operation just tell the surgeon that the mask is bs and maybe he won’t wear it.

  55. Bonnie B Fairbank

    mike from iowa: I just remembered where I saw The Queen of Covid-19 use the word “streamlined” recently. I’m trying to help a double-amputee veteran get a (coming SOON) SD medical cannabis card, and she appears in all her Xanax-glazed glory in a minute-long video entitled “MedCannabis.SD.gov” where she used her favorite lazy word 45 seconds in. It’s fookin’ GLORIOUS.

  56. Porter Lansing

    Speaking of Jervis Allen’s foolish ideas about Covid risk, is it true that John Dale is in intensive care on a respirator?

  57. happy camper

    These Old Republicans are so scared of having their dignity pounded on maybe it would do them some good to allow them to look once again at their priorities. They talk the talk but they don’t know how to walk.

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