Speaking of billboards, here’s a billboard Kristi Noem will not approve. Killer Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg—whom Governor Noem asked to step away from the office days after he killed Joseph Boever and who has since called for his resignation, impeachment, and replacement with Marty Jackley—is using the Governor’s image on his chintzy but still, incredibly, functional campaign website:
Jason and Kristi side by side? Expect a cease-and-desist order from Team Noem to Ravnsborg any moment.
Ravnsborg’s website was designed by the PR Marketing Group of Hot Springs, owned an operated by California refugees Bobby and Trish Ladner. Trish is a District 30 Representative seeking reëlection; she and Bobby are running unopposed for Fall River-CAS precinct committeepeople, meaning they will have a vote at convention on the Attorney General nominee. If they don’t hurry up and wipe Noem’s unapproved image from Ravnsbrog’s website, Trish may expect Noem to endorse some of her four opponents in the District 30 Republican House primary and maybe even march into convention with a parliamentary maneuver to refuse to seat the Ladners.
Ravnsborg must have kompromat on every Republican in South Dakota. It’s beyond brazen; it’s Trumpian hubris.
Kristi and Jason. Forever and ever!
Some bundlers out there are no doubt seeing the fundraising potential to eliminate Kristi before she can file for the early 2024 primary states. Write a check today for $2,000 to Jason and mail it to Jason for South Dakota, P.O. Box 464, Pierre, SD 57501. Even better, set up a dark money account (the Kneecap Noem Now Fund?) to help educate South Dakotans and GOP activists in Nevada, Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina on Naughty Kristi’s total lack of accomplishments in a state with a 91 percent Republican Legislature. She can’t even get along with her own GOP leadership. What a zero!
Jason and Kristi forever and ever! They truly deserve each other.
P.S. – April 15’s coming soon, Kristi. How’s that response coming along to your legal and ethical violations??? Please send Cory a copy.
John Paul Sartre wrote an classic novel about Hell called “No Exit.” Three people died and had to spend eternity in one small room together. It was an eternal triangle of desire and repulsion, which led to the phrase “Hell is other people.” Here, it would seem that Noem and Ravnsborg would certainly qualify to be two of the characters in No Exit. Anyone have a suggestion for the third person in the room?
bearcreekbat, I would suggest EVERYONE else in SD is that third member.
bearcreekbat, Trump should be the third person. Both Kristi and Jason are Trumpers but will they be able to spend all eternity kissing his butt?
Trump can’t be the third character, because he’s not self-aware enough to truly suffer.
I lean toward O’s suggestion that the third person is the entire state as one great, damned Greek chorus. But if we can only afford to hire three actors for the play, Character #3 is Marty Jackley.
Larry, if I were a Republican, I would have no fear of any kompromat Jason thinks he might have. He’s not smart enough to recognize good compromising evidence, and even if he stumbles upon Jackley’s old lockbox of EB-5/GEAR UP dirt, Ravnsborg isn’t smart enough to deploy that evidence in a way that would lead to any prosecutions or convictions.
From all the shenanigans to the ruination of education k-12 in S.D., I’d like to send Michael Rounds to hell with Kristi and Jason. Between the 3 of them, Kristi killed more people with ignorance and irrationality, Jason the murderer exhibits illegal behaviors without remorse, and Rounds has a cloud over his head and a couple shadows following him that Jason just may know all about.
Ravensborg’s political career is not quite over….The South Dakota electorate, led by the Republican Party, is just weird enough in it’s reasoning that, in the uncontrolled mania that is the State Republican Convention, he may survive.When the going gets tough, the tough get weird….he will have plenty of company.
The third person should be Bill Janklow. He, more than any other single person, started this descent toward cults, consisting of one person (and tons of willing buttsuckers), of personality that bear ill will toward all.
If only my close personal friend Bob were to step up and run for AG as a Libertarian, or if Mr. H could prop up the Democrats to find a legitimate contender with a wad of cash to pound on Ravnsborg before the general election.
Ok bear with me. This is Jason’s website voluntarily posting a picture showing himself beside Kristi. To what purpose? There are limited scenarios: 1) Jason is attempting to elevate his credibility, b) Jason is attempting to drag Kristi’s credibility lower(remember he isn’t the brightest bulb in the drawer) 1c) Jason is trying to elevate Kristi’s credibility. Is it possible that someone could be this dense? The only answer I come up with is; frequently.
Why hasn’t his commander stepped in? His behavior is unbecoming of an officer.
https://apnews.com/article/kristi-noem-sioux-falls-south-dakota-impeachments-3da0edc5d04c6102a04252b6dbbbd990
Francis, I vote for density, as it is the simplest explanation and coheres with Ravnsborg’s general demeanor and performance.
I could argue for simple laziness and forgetfulness: Jason and the Ladners may not even have checked his cheap campaign website since Noem called for his resignation in February 2021. Take a look at the Facebook feed shown in the screen cap: he hasn’t updated his campaign Facebook page since September 12, 2020, the day he killed Joe Boever.
But if I adopt the Mary Haug approach to literary analysis—take nothing in literature as accident; assume intent in every word—then, Francis, your first hypothesis is the most likely: the point of a campaign website is to promote the candidate, so the author must feel he can boost his chances of winning votes by associating himself with Noem. it may also be a subtle shot at your second hypothesis, attempting to lower her credibility on her call for his removal, by reminding folks that she used to be perfectly comfortable sitting next to him and viewing him as a partner in good government, so maybe her sudden antipathy is motivated by something other than the facts, which a whole lot of other Republicans are saying don’t warrant impeachment, so why can’t we all just get along like we used to? I would then suggest he could be taking a tertiary swing at your tertiary hypothesis (texts can serve many purposes), not necessarily to boost Noem’s credibility, but to offer her an olive branch and a way out, to say, “Hey, I’m still willing to work with you, and if you work with me in the name of party comity, you’ll boost your own credibility more than you will be leading a bloody battle at convention that will lose you the support of at least some of the Trumpy base that I’m rallying to my side.”
Bob, Janklow can’t be the third character in “No Exit.” Janklow is the devil himself, the creator of this Hell, a demigod far above the craven mortals who now inhabit the hopeless realm he hath wrought.
Governor Noem is Ravnsborg’s Commander in Chief and can relieve him of command of his battalion.
It’s likely Ravnsborg has committed mail fraud that the US Attorney for District of South Dakota could find charges. BCB?
If you go to the site you will see they did not bother to change the campaign year in the upper left corner from ’18 to ’22. Idiots.
jkl, I’m not seeing the 2018 in the upper left. Is it on top of the banner?
I do notice that Jason hasn’t changed his Piryx fundraising account since 2014: hover over his donation buttons at the upper right and at the bottom, and you’ll see the URL still refers to his 2014 U.S. Senate campaign:
secure.piryx.com/donate/4WsydJvf/Jason-Ravnsborg-for-U-S-Senate/JasonforSouth-Dakota
That’s lazy branding: for campaigns this important, your URLs should leave no confusion about which office you are running for, especially when the URL says donations should be subject to Federal Election Commission laws and not South Dakota campaign finance laws. You’d think a lawyer would be more meticulous about such things.
Compare that to Marty Jackley’s website. He ran for Governor in 2018, but his 2022 campaign donation URL is updated to show he’s running for Attorney General:
secure.winred.com/marty-jackley-for-attorney-general/donate-today
Jackley’s website is set up and maintained by Factor 360 of Pierre. Factor 360 appears to be better at Web design than the Ladners, but remarkably, they haven’t added any photos of Marty together with Kristi yet.
I clicked on the link in the first paragraph of your article, “using the Governor’s image”, and that is the page I saw.
Well we know Jason reads Dakota Free Press so now he will get his website in order? Or not
So now I read Ravnsborg scared a couple troopers off the road. Geez. How’s this guy get car insurance? Crazy. And any civil settlement was/is not enough. The state and local law enforcement has some liability ( and personal guilt I hope) letting this character roam the roads recklessly. Unbelievable.
Spike…read the article in the Argus Leader..Ravensborgh certainly has a history as a distracted and confused driver…seems to have trouble distinguishing appropriate lane when the highway goes from two lanes (two either way) to one lane as it does about a half mile from where Joe Boever was struck (as I understand it)…might explain why he was driving on the ditch side of the fog line and not alerted by rumble bars (he entered the shoulder before the rumble bars started??)…He may of entered the shoulder when looking at the teenagers at the gas station, some distance from where he struck Joe Boever. Driving at night, reading his cell phone, recipe for disaster.
“Hell is other people” for Sartre refers to our allowing others to limit our freedom.
I’d be very careful of such a thesis on this era of FreeDumb.
“Refers to others limiting our freedom” is a new take. Sartre himself has said it means that we end up judging ourselves within the framework others provide us and that judgment is the underlying ouchie.
Anyways…. it appears Ravnsborg just doesn’t care. The manner in which he has dealt with this, (not showing up to sentencing, his words to investigators, his decision to run again, has revealed a man a precious little character. And he stands a fair chance of winning again. What does that say about us all?
Dicta and DaveFN, I think this explanation is a reasonable interpretation of Sartre’s concept that “Hell is other people” and fits both Noem and Ravnsborg quite well:
https://1000wordphilosophy.com/2021/02/08/hell-is-other-people-sartre-on-personal-relationships/
Neither Noem nor Ravnsborg can escape the freedom to understand that they each are living a lie and that despite all the excuses for their actions they want to fall back on to justify and excuse obnoxious actions that they fear define them, they are merely shameful actors and objects in the eyes of each other.
Dicta
Here is what Sartre himself has to say about what he himself means in _Huis Clos_ when he has Garcin, who takes himself to be tortured by Inez and Estelle, with no way out (ie., as I previously indicated, “allowing others to limit our freedom”) which prompts Garcin to exclaim: “Hell is other people:”
“…« l’enfer c’est les autres » a été toujours mal compris. On a cru que je voulais dire par là que nos rapports avec les autres étaient toujours empoisonnés, que c’était toujours des rapports infernaux. Or, c’est tout autre chose que je veux dire. Je veux dire que si les rapports avec autrui sont tordus, viciés, alors l’autre ne peut être que l’enfer. Pourquoi ? Parce que les autres sont, au fond, ce qu’il y a de plus important en nous-mêmes, pour notre propre connaissance de nous-mêmes. Quand nous pensons sur nous, quand nous essayons de nous connaître, au fond nous usons des connaissances que les autres ont déjà sur nous, nous nous jugeons avec les moyens que les autres ont — nous ont donnés — de nous juger. Quoi que je dise sur moi, toujours le jugement d’autrui entre dedans. Quoi que je sente de moi, le jugement d’autrui entre dedans. Ce qui veut dire que, si mes rapports sont mauvais, je me mets dans la totale dépendance d’autrui et alors, en effet, je suis en enfer. Et il existe une quantité de gens dans le monde qui sont en enfer parce qu’ils dépendent trop du jugement d’autrui. Mais cela ne veut nullement dire qu’on ne puisse avoir d’autres rapports avec les autres ; ça marque simplement l’importance capitale de tous les autres pour chacun de nous.
“…”hell is other people” has always been misunderstood. It was believed that I meant that our relationships with others were always poisoned, that they were always infernal relationships. However, it is something else entirely that I meant to say. I meant to say that if relationships with others are twisted, flawed, then the other can only be hell. Why? Because others are, fundamentally, the most important thing in ourselves, for our own knowledge of ourselves. Whatever I feel about myself, the judgment of others enters into it. When we think about ourselves, when we try to know ourselves, deep down we use the knowledge that others already have about us, we judge ourselves with the means that others have — given us — to judge ourselves. Whatever I say about myself, he judgment of others enters into it. Whatever I feel about myself, the judgment of others enters into it. In other words, if my relationships are bad, I put myself in total dependence on others and then, indeed, I am in hell. There are a lot of people in the world who are in hell because they depend too much on the judgment of others. But this in no way means that one cannot have other relationships with others; it simply marks the paramount importance of all the others for each of us.”
https://www.philo5.com/Les%20philosophes%20Textes/Sartre_L'EnferC'EstLesAutres.htm
[translation mine]
bearcreekbat
For Sartre there is more than one form of bad faith, of course. Dr. Betty Cannon puts it very nicely:
“The bad faith into which we all fall at one time or another may take two forms, based on the two sides of human reality On the one hand, there is facticity—the contingent world which I did not create but which I must choose to live in some fashion or another. Facticity includes my own past as well as external circumstances. On the other hand, there is freedom—my choice of objects in the world as a way of realizing my own fundamental project of being. A full recognition of my freedom includes the recognition that nothing–neither myself nor traditional values nor God—has a priori status as value. Instead, I create value through valuing. I fall into bad faith if I take one or both of two dishonest positions about reality: If I pretend either to be free in a world without facts or to be a fact in a world without freedom.”
–Betty Cannon. Sartre and Psychoanalysis: An Existentialist Challenge to Clinical Metatheory; Lawrence, Kansas: The University Press of Kansas, 1991, p 46.
[Betty Cannon. PhD, is President and Founder of the Boulder Psychotherapy Institute which trains therapists in Applied Existential Psychotherapy (AEP) and is literary executor, student and friend student of Hazel Barnes, the latter who popularized existentialism in the US and translated several of Sartre’s works
https://www.boulderpsych.com/about.php?msclkid=ae1151a2b52611eca1b256f9518c7c12 ]
I myself do not subscribe to AEP per se, nor to her view of Jacques Lacan and his opus (much of his work had yet to be translated when she wrote her above book) but simply note that if one wishes to contextualize Freud as well as most French intellectuals of the past century, one could do little better than to read her above book.
I do follow your point on Noem, et al. My point regarding FreeDum is that the FreeDummers (as we are prone to say in DFP, which says much about us and not necessarily positive) err in bad faith in that they think they “should” live in a world of absolute freedom insofar as they refuse to acknowledge the facticity of COVID and the use of vaccines, believe in unlimited gun rights, etc, etc. Yet there go I, to paraphrase your terms, “a shameful actor and object in the eyes of the other” as they view myself.
Update: I check Ravnsborg’s campaign website this morning and find Jason’s picture with Kristi has been removed from the banner. The home page banner is now a static image, the photo of Jason at his desk while Tim Bormann hands him some papers that was originally rotating with the Jason/Kristi shot. The image, which crops Bormann’s head, has been shrunken and overlaid on an American flag. The metadata on the page gives a publication date of “Tue Apr 05 14:13:23 UTC 2022,” indicating that the webmaster updated the home page one day after I published the above screen cap.
But in their haste to remove Kristi’s photo and reconfigure the banner, they failed to line up the new image with the cut out of Jason at the very top, meaning Jason’s head and torso now float detached from the banner image:
This cropped banner image also chops off Jason’s hands and desk, which were visible in the previous version. When we could see his hands and desk, the image at least conveyed the impression that he was busy working with lots of papers. The papers on the desk gave Jason’s and Tim’s eyes a reason to be focused downward, away from us. This new crop leaves no image of the work on the desk. The image thus leaves Jason looking inactive, passive, waiting for his chief of staff to hand him something.
And in general, I would suggest that there is no good reason to cut a picture through any subjects hand or head. Sloppy work, web designers.
The page code includes these keywords and this description:
In last week’s update, the Web designers removed the feed from Jason’s campaign Facebook.