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Noem Applies for 2024 Fireworks Show at Mount Rushmore

A day after July 4, Governor Kristi Noem applies for permission to shoot fireworks at Mount Rushmore in 2024:

“There is truly no better place to celebrate America’s Birthday than Mount Rushmore. The Biden Administration has consistently denied us the ability to celebrate our nation’s Freedom with fireworks, said Governor Noem. “We will keep fighting to host fireworks at Mount Rushmore and celebrate our Freedoms.”

Under Governor Noem’s leadership, the Fireworks Celebration was returned to Mount Rushmore in 2020 after being canceled for more than a decade. Unfortunately, President Biden and the National Parks Service rejected the permit applications for the 2021, 2022, and 2023 celebrations.

The Fireworks Celebration would occur in conjunction with the Memorandum Agreement signed on May 6, 2019, between the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior and Governor Noem [Office of the Governor, press release, 2023.07.05].

As we and the federal courts have pointed out before, the 2019 memorandum Governor Noem cites was not a standing agreement; it was a one-off special permit for the risky and costly 2020 Trump fireworks at Mount Rushmore. Citing that 2019 memorandum adds no more legal weight to this application than it did to Noem’s previous failed grandstandings.

So why not throw a curveball, Kristi? Apply for a permit to have a drone show over Mount Rushmore. Then you could light up the sky with a likeness of the Statue of Liberty morphing into first you and then the Donald!

20 Comments

  1. P. Aitch 2023-07-06 08:09

    Act now, President Biden, to ban fireworks for America’s Semiquincentennial. I just attended the final tour (maybe) of Dead & Company and the drone lighting display was breath taking. Or was that the smoke in the air. lol – Visit Colorado ~ You Know, For the Scenery :0)

  2. e platypus onion 2023-07-06 08:30

    Listening to shrill Noem speechify is enough droning for my ear and hearing aid. Ghastly, to be sure.

  3. Nix 2023-07-06 08:52

    The Dope Queen of Delusion wants to ban all Chinese investments in South Dakota, but those evil bastards sure make great fireworks !

  4. jad 2023-07-06 14:34

    This would turn out to be a political rally paid for by SD taxpayers just like the trump rally

  5. P. Aitch 2023-07-06 15:18

    For Cory et al: Some know I left Twitter when the new ownership took over. I’m now on THREADS.
    Carry on, shipmates. 😊

  6. Pat Bilek 2023-07-06 15:28

    Our governess seems to have gotten all she needs to know about the history of indigenous people from a Hillsdale social studies curriculum.

  7. P. Aitch 2023-07-06 16:23

    Guess what city in your state has been designated “most miserable in South Dakota”. Give up?
    – The national median household income is approximately $61,000. In contrast, the median household income in Rapid City is just $48,900. On top of that, Rapid City has the most drug arrests per capita in the United States.

    This puts the city’s crime rate at 38% higher than the national average, giving citizens a 1 in 29 chance that they’ll become the victim of a crime at some point. We think Sioux Falls sounds like the much better choice since it is the happiest city in the state.

  8. 96Tears 2023-07-06 18:25

    Noem was a no show at today’s rally just right outside her office door. People spotted her at the Pierre Zesto’s buying ice cream. She’s chicken.

  9. James Cadwell 2023-07-06 20:17

    What a bout the ground water contamination? How soon we forget. Rumor has it that some of the fireworks residue leeches into the ground water and is cancer causing. I for one like my well water, take the fireworks elsewhere.

  10. grudznick 2023-07-06 21:43

    Mr. Cadwell, do you know what is worse than the smoke from fireworks which #4Science tells us takes 28 years to leech down to the level of ground water and is inert and mundane by then? What is worse is the grass fertilizer. The fireworks puts the ozones back in the air, shock-starts new growth in certain deciduous tree species.

  11. John 2023-07-07 09:48

    In related matters . . . SD Executive Order establishes, The America 250th South Dakota Commission. (What an awkward moniker.)
    “While the anniversary of the United States’ birthday is three years away, the commission will “plan, encourage, develop, coordinate, and promote observances and activities to be held in South Dakota,” according to a press release from the Governor’s Office.”
    https://governor.sd.gov/doc/EO_2023-11.pdf
    ““Our United States of America is the greatest nation to ever exist in the history of the world. In less than three years, we’re turning 250. This momentous occasion deserves a year-long celebration worthy of our great country,” Noem stated in the release. “I am looking forward to working with the America 250th South Dakota Commission to commemorate our history. Together, we will cherish our founding principles and celebrate our Freedoms.” – I’ll return to this. https://news.yahoo.com/noem-announces-commission-celebrate-250th-234731636.html

    Since the SD legislature has yet to fund the commission . . . it will interesting to observe both potential legislative funding processes, and the potential grants and strings that the commission must navigate. We ought anticipate a retelling of history suitable for the majority as opposed to an actual bloody, slave holding, genocidal, and bigoted history that trudged along well short of its rhetoric.

    Returning to Noem’s trope of the US being ‘the greatest nation to ever exist . . . reminds one of the bizarre hypocrisy in republican rhetoric. That being, that the US is the greatest nation, yet everything is going to hell. Reflect on this gift article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/07/bizarre-contradiction-republican-america/ “These are the two faces of Republican rhetoric, especially that offered by the party’s presidential candidates: America is the greatest country that has ever existed on Earth, but it’s also a hellhole. It’s a place of limitless opportunity but also limitless woe. Even the lowliest among us can achieve anything they wish, yet we all struggle under the boot heel of an oppressive state. Our hearts overflow with virtue, yet we are a nation of perverts and reprobates. We are envied throughout the world, yet virtually all of our institutions are corrupted nearly beyond repair.”

    Finally, catch up on your Revolutionary War reading, “The British are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy, Book 1), by Rick Atkinson. And somehow they accomplished it without Mount Rushmore and a fireworks show.

  12. All Mammal 2023-07-07 11:13

    They tried to be cute and bring up some gruesome history during a 4th of July parade in Muscatine, Iowa, and utterly failed to realize how offensive, racist, and misleading the entry was. The parade committee allowed a white woman on horseback to lead another white young lady who was wearing a fringed skirt and moccasin slippers on a rope tied to her bound hands in the parade. Not only sick, but ignorant to the fact that Native women and girls are still to this goddamn day captured and forced into bondage for the sex trade. It is thanks to losers like KN and the Iowa parade committee we are still dealing with these diabolical crimes against humanity. Only from a privileged white perspective from aloft a high horse could one proclaim this is the greatest country ever on earth. Look around and crack open a Howard Zinn book, you belligerent honkies. Not everyone shares such a conceited perspective of a country responsible for genocide, slavery, starvation and rape.

    https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2023-07-06/parade-entry-of-woman-in-native-american-dress-pulled-by-a-rope-sows-outrage-confusion

  13. Eve Fisher 2023-07-07 12:39

    Comment of the week on this topic on a (very) conservative website:
    “This is B****** because ND [sic] Mt. Rushmore is made of rocks, and ROCKS DON’T BURN!”

  14. e platypus onion 2023-07-07 13:27

    Couple in Muscatine tried to pass off their parade exhibit as a tribute towhatbhappened to Cherokee Indians. Near as i can tellk the Cherokees were forceablymarched from Florida to Oklahoma with zero rest stops in iowa. But, that is whitey’s ignorance.

  15. P. Aitch 2023-07-07 14:23

    @DaveFU – R U OK?

  16. All Mammal 2023-07-07 17:33

    P.- you know, I really found your comment to be rather readable and helpful. I especially liked how you spiced up the facts with your own flavor. Doing so makes it go down much easier than a battery of the usual boring old figures. Thanks for always being a reliable source.

    And remember, the reason we like having you around ain’t your booty- it’s your beauty;)

  17. P. Aitch 2023-07-07 18:06

    Thank you friend AM. You make me smile and laugh. DaveFU is alright, too. He’s just built a hard shell over his personality.

  18. All Mammal 2023-07-07 20:20

    Yes, our resident epistemological schmientist is mean and barbed in a very lovable way. I bet he is adorable when he gets mad at us. He needs his cheeks kissed:o
    I imagine one of these days, we will cross paths in Rapid City and I’m going to holler, “DaveFN- it’s me, All Mammal, your (favorite) obnoxious pal!” Any day….

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