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Noem Chose Insular Ignorance During Pandemic

I’m not sure where Governor Kristi Noem is spending this weekend, but last weekend she flew to Beaver Creek—Colorado, not Minnesota—to talk over people’s lunch at the Steamboat Institute‘s Freedom Conference and Festival.

If you’re having trouble sleeping tonight, here, roll the tape:

When she sat down for Q&A after her talk, Governor Noem revealed her secret for dealing with criticism and unpleasant facts: don’t listen to them. Do what she did during the covid pandemic: don’t watch the news!

I understand it was a very scary time, and I think what was interesting was for all of us the weight of the fact that it literally was up to us to decide. I had an amazing executive team that would have debates and discussions with me over every decision I was making, but they all would look at me and tell me I just needed to decide. That was a heavy, heavy responsibility.

In fact, what I did to kind of survive that time, and it was a hard time, was to quit watching the news. I didn’t watch the nightly news.

And then you had all these wonderful friends that feel like they have to call you the next day and say, “Did you see what Elizabeth Warren said about you last night?” No, I’m trying to stay away from what she’s saying about me [Gov. Kristi Noem, response to host question, Steamboat Institute Freedom Conference, Beaver Creek, Colorado, 2023.08.25].

It seems odd that, given all the pointed criticism the Noem Administration has posted against newspeople who have reported unpleasant facts and the poor performance of her administration or who just don’t say what she wants them to say the way she wants them to say it, she claims that she quit watching the news. Someone on the Second Floor is certainly watching the news for what people are saying about the Snow Queen.

But hey: Don’t watch the news, don’t let in any information that might contradict your rationale for your policy decisions—this is what kakistocracy looks like.

Related Rates: Booking a Standard Queen for one August Friday night at the Park Hyatt Beaver Creek Resort and Spa, site of the Freedom Conference and Festival costs $675. One night in the rustic six-guest camper cabin at Beaver Creek Valley State Park costs $80.

27 Comments

  1. P. Aitch

    During COVID your Governor didn’t know what to do so she did nothing and labeled it promoting small government. Any decisions were made by county and municipal officials because leadership was vacant. Just as many businesses shut down in SD as shut down anywhere. Your Governor brags that she didn’t shut down her state. She’s right. Others shut it down for her because she literally froze and didn’t even pay attention to the news.

  2. Loren

    Don’t want bad news? Turn off the TV. Wait… wasn’t she the one that quit testing for COVID because if you tested more you just found more cases? Un, ya… same reasoning.

  3. Arlo Blundt

    It was a criminal and intentional lack of leadership by Governor Noem. Her indecision resulted in premature deaths for South Dakota citizens.

  4. Fran

    P. Aitch and Loren are spot on in their comments. We had a lack of leadership at the Governor level. Now she spouts freedom. Hog wash.

  5. All Mammal

    Gosh. There is always this urge to not be so negative towards our first female governor. She could exemplify strength and elegance we’d be proud to show off and brag about. She can get so close to being personable. And she’s not Quasimodo-looking. It’s just hard not seeing her potential to be a bad chick.

    Maybe if she had better mentors than Cory Lewandowski and Don T….. all those attributes and qualities; wasted on no good. so close, dang it. Note to self: snap out of it. It’s never gonna happen!

    It isn’t difficult to get why out of state luncheon attendees dig her. She is grooming future voters hard. They have no idea she is a well trained shark and they are simply baby seals.

  6. Those folks at the lunch and learn know exactly what they are getting to speak to them…nothing, nothing at all. In business, you go to those thingys for the meal and to talk and have a couple of drinks with your fellows afterwards. The topics you speak of then. have nothing at all to do with what the speaker blathered about as what they say is a complete drone of words that you don’t even grasp as anything other than words. In other words, boring.
    NOem was a filler for the time slot, I am quite sure they really wanted someone else to be there, but that person bowed out. The Institute gets a tax write off, and NOem gets a taxpayer paid ride.

    In the 70’s, Steamboat Springs was about as cool as you could get. The area, at that time, was just amazing with a lot of hot springs and great attitudes of all who ventured there. Good memories of the high times in those mountains. But, there is always some dog crap that you step in and with NOem there, I see some things never change.

  7. P. Aitch

    The Steamboat Institute has nothing to do with Steamboat Springs or Colorado other than hiding there. It’s a Connie group of rip offs. The organization “has regularly provided a platform for climate change deniers and fossil fuel proponents to spread their messages.

  8. Debra Johnson

    I will not give her a Pat on the back for anything. She has done nothing but made the State of South Dakota a laughing stock for every other state to laugh at

  9. sx123

    Ignorance is bliss. Unfortunately those that keep the world running have to deal with the (many times) ugly realities.

    Sticking head in sand doesn’t work long term.

  10. David Newquist

    Here is the achievement for which she is so proud: The state ranks 9th in Covid deaths per capita among U.S. states and 3rd in cases per-capita.[

  11. Told you so. Ethnic cleansing is exactly what Trumpist Republicans hope to accomplish in Native America.

    Where did her back pain go? $20 says she contracted the Trump Virus and chose to lie about it instead.

  12. e platypus onion

    OT 76 year old Jimmy Buffet permanently resides in Davy Jone’s locker, forevermore.

  13. On his way to the labor day weekend. Kinda appropriate as this is part his biggest hits “Come Monday”

  14. P. Aitch

    🎶 “I found myself on the continental divide. Tell me where do I go from here? Think I’ll ride into Leadville and have a few beers.” ….. 🐌
    “INCOMMUNICADO” by Jimmy Buffett https://youtu.be/6viQLjBgtO4?feature=shared

  15. e platypus onion

    Where did her back pain go? I got it, 46 years ago and counting, Larry.

    Noem, like all other magats, is a liar and they don’t care if the whole wrld knows it. They just keep the lies flowing, imho.

  16. Rick

    I didn’t watch the video because I can’t stand the sound of her voice and I think she’s full of crap but she seems to conveniently forget that she did shut down state-wide government offices for a few months at the start of the pandemic. I’m going by memory but I think state offices opened up around late summer 2020? However, I know a state employee and allegedly, Kristi and her executive team worked mostly remote for over a year.

    She’s an expert liar but inept at governing. She’s a professional and well-documented traffic law violator who didn’t pay her citations or show up in court to contest them but she is an ineffective leader. It’s bewildering that South Dakotans support and fawn over her when it’s so obvious that she’s all fluff and no substance.

  17. Witch Tracy

    Noem personifies insular ignorance.

  18. EMILY

    It Amazes me that a woman with such a pretty fresh face can continue to spout these lies. How does a woman have enough energy to make up such fairy tales?. Research her story concerning her father. It begins there.
    If you look into it at all you will rapidly
    See where the lies began. FOLLOW THE MONEY. Her story begins there. Such an active imagination she has. SD ought to feel deep shame when they they see her antics in commercials and read the content of her speeches. We desperately need workers, we need homes to live in, we need a reasonable Civics curriculum, we need someone in the government that cares about the counties in her state. It’s all about her Hollywood personality. It’s all about Kristi and what Kristi wants. It’s not about what’s good for her state.

  19. I thought our team did a spectacular job given all the factors.

    It’s why our governor was reelected.

    BTW – I have SpearfishCityLimits.com now – someone registered it out from under me when we started in 2014, but finally gave-up on it.

    PlainsTribune.com will be a more family friendly production, and I’ll do my normal swearing and rabble rousing at the SpearfishCityLimits site.

    Thank you everyone who has helped us along.

    Next round is going to be a spectacular knock-out.

  20. grudznick

    Mr. Dale, are you up to feasting at the Steerfish Tuesday?

  21. Another Trump mass spreader in Raped City might be a spectacular knockout, indeed.

  22. e platypus onion

    By the by, Buffet died from skin cancer in a hospice.

  23. Algebra

    My sister worked for Kaiser-Permanente and was on the front lines when Covid first hit the USA in Kirkland Washington. By April of 2020 it was a known fact that the one comorbidity found in everybody who died was Vitamin D deficiency.
    I was on my roof in my underwear everyday over the noon hour, listening to Rush Limbaugh because he was broadcasting at the same time. Even when the temperature was in the 40s, I was on the roof.
    What did the politicians do with that information?
    They closed the parks and beaches, and told everybody to stay indoors.

    At the same time we learned the virus was causing blood clots: heart attacks, strokes, and pulmonary emboli. I was taking a baby aspirin every day and staying active and hydrated. Did you hear Dr Fauci advising that? Nope.
    What everybody needed was sun, water, exercise and aspirin, all things that could have been obtained without massive amounts of additional government funding. But what they got was bad advice.

    Governor Noem allowed people to spend the sumner outdoors, didn’t shut down any parks, recreation, festivals, fairs or the bike rally, And the covid outbreak didnt peak in South Dakota until November 2020, two weeks after the weather turned cold and everybody stayed indoors, out of the sun.

    I just spent this past weekend at the wedding of a pair of Brooklyn NY residents, hearing how awful it was in New York. What they went through was ghastly, the mortality rate was staggering. It was worse than what we were hearing on the news. (They evacuated to a short-term rental in Massachusetts, where things were better.)

    Whether the Governor knew about the importance of sunlight and exercise, keeping the outdoor activities open was the right decision.

  24. Attorneys are gathering even more evidence that the Trump Organization committed crimes against humanity throughout Indian Country not only by slow-walking resources to reservations during a pandemic but by undercounting Indigenous populations during the 2020 Census. Donald Trump even killed the White House Tribal Nations Summit because he loathes Native Americans.

    That “Pocahontas” thing Trump does to Senator Elizabeth Warren doesn’t just betray his hatred for women; it’s a tell that he detests American Indians no matter how much or how little Native blood a person has. That Republicans continue to prop up his assault on the courts and stoke his criminal race baiting are the most telling aspects of this march toward the abyss. Trump’s erasure of protections for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments was cruel retribution targeting Indigenous peoples.

    Why? In past years the Trump Organization has used the federal courts to punish tribal nations who built casinos Trump said were competition then deployed COVID-19 as a biological weapon in Indian Country. Starting in New York Donald Trump targeted the Mohawk and Oneida Nations for annihilation then his Tulsa trip and his campaign rally in occupied South Dakota spread disease throughout Native America.

    Adjusted for age and population Trump killed many more American Indians and Alaska Natives (AIAN) per capita than he did whites.

  25. Mr. Independant

    Trumps visit is just a testing ground to bring Kristi into his campaign (probably a VP candidate). When did a Presidential candidate really give a d@m about a solid republican state that offered 3 electorial votes?

  26. e platypus onion

    https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/30/texas-attorney-general-pfizer-lawsuit/

    Paxdum is suing Pfizer for not ending the pandemic soon enough. Texass AG must get his law2suit inspirations from a couple of DFP trolls, one from Soo Falls and the other from Rabid City.

    Notice pic of Noem appears to be the same one as in recent Ohio dinner. What no American flag lapel pin?

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