KSFY’s Austin Goss is keeping good track of where Governor Kristi Noem is doing her part in her statewide collaboration with Senate President Pro-Tem Lee Schoenbeck (R-5/Lake Kampeska) to replace more radical conservatives with more pliable moderates. On Friday, Goss noted that Noem has endorsed primary challengers Jesse Fonkert and Ken Teunissen over hard right-wing incumbent Representative Bethany Soye of Sioux Falls in the District 9 House race:
Goss also catches Noem endorsing newcomer Republicans Larry Larson and Liz Regalado in the District 35 House primary over incumbent right-wingers Reps. Tony Randolph and Tina Mulally:
Goss notes that both Larson and Regalado “have been registered as Democrats at one point or another in the last 4 years” and that Larson just switched his registration to Republican at the end of 2021.
The Noem campaign put out a press release a couple weeks ago saying “the media is lying again when they say I am working to ‘purge’ the legislature of certain members,” but there she is in Districts 9 and 35, working to purge three certain members of the House, just as we saw a few days ago that she is working in District 3 to purge one certain member of the Senate.
Once again, Kristi Noem projects her own deceitfulness onto journalists who are just trying to report the facts. Why not just tell the truth, Kristi? You think certain Republicans should not be in the Legislature, and you are helping their opponents’ campaigns. What’s wrong with admitting that obvious fact?
You should not wear torn at the knees blue jeans if you’re over 15.
Fifty year old try to look twenty
FWIW, those are worn/torn all the way to the pockets. One step away from cutoffs on a bike material.
Purge might be a bit strong, or it might be right on the money. It doesn’t seem to be a violent purge, if it is a purge. It’s more sticking your finger down your throat kind of purge. I get it. Less crazy people in the Legislature would be an improvement. When your own party is nuts, you kind of have to recruit sanity from the other party.
I agree, I always used to tell my students that I had dozens of blue jeans that didn’t have rips in them and I could give them a pair to work in. I was always razzed for a dad joke. It is sad that Noem refuses to age gracefully isn’t it.
Few things make me happier than GOP on GOP bloodletting. Let the carnage begin!
You might be onto something there, Donald.
Perhaps Noem’s surprising over-reaction to the term “purge” may be more of a trigger from someone who looks like she’s had an eating disorder. Eating disorders are pretty common for people who are so insecure that they believe their looks matter more than personality and substance.
When she gets on a horse and hoists the American flag like a high school rodeo princess, the visual of a 50-year-old woman acting like that evokes an eerie creepiness more than patriotism or respect for the flag. There is only one reason why she’s doing it, and we all know it. She’s hungry for publicity because she suffers the delusion that she’s capable of being President of the United States. It’s easier to pose on a horse than actually get anything substantive done as a governor of a small state. The flag is prop. Her teenie-bopper choices of wardrobe are props. The horse is a prop. The seed caps and cowboy hats are props, like the sashes and tiaras were when she was crowned South Dakota Snow Queen waaaaaay back in 1990. It’s all synthetic.
Perhaps news reporters should carry along an updated edition of the DSM-5 to determine if Noem’s temper flashes and creepy behavior are related to mental disorders.
Well…96, I won’t live long enough to psychoanalyze our Governor. Not much time, too much to do, but, she sits at 75% plus with Republican voters on her reputation of “I’m just as dumb as you are.” Tough to beat.
Cweepy, a liar. SD governor, the emotional-maturity stunted fool on par w/Trump.
Suppose she sold out her “meth, we’re on it” state to Trump and the “essential” meatpackers of the nation when covid attacked Smithfield, and her freedumb crowd, and everyone else, from her super spreader firecracker, science denier, “all workers are essential”, and m/c rally?
CDC federal mandates were washed out. She caused killing and infecting residents and visitors unnecessarily.
Purge? Roach corner kickers? Yep. Meth, we’re still on it!
Leslie..unfortunately intellectual arguments and references to science have no impact on the Governor’s popularity in the Party. She would be damaged in the polls if it were known she traded in her Ford, diesel, 250 Heavy Duty and was driving a Japanese vehicle, say a Nissan Titan, or God forgive, was seen in a Prius. But other than that, she’s bullet proof.
That Mrs. Noem’s rejiggering of her campaign propaganda has cuddled more intimately to the center comes after Idaho signaled marginal nutbag utility.
Lee Schoenbeck is de facto King of South Dakota, dig it or don’t.
To her credit, Liz Regalado wore jeans to this campaign event with no tears.
Donald says that fewer crazy people in the Legislature would be an improvement. Like Kristi’s jeans, I’m torn. I should agree immediately: replacing Soye, Randolph, and Mulally with moderates would make the Legislature better. But those three legislators and other crazy House Republicans got us closer to repealing the food tax than ever before because they were willing to buck the Senate and the Governor. The crazies at least occasionally act like an opposition party. Noem is trying to purge that opposition.
Cory writes:
It always seems a little surreal when Cory writes my thoughts.
Respect to Austin Goss, who I thought was a phenomenal journalist even before I found out he professes Christianity.
Larry Kurtz writes:
I don’t, but I’ll concede that he’s less evil than Corey Lewandowski and Craig Price.
Well, says Robert Reich:
Today’s billionaire class is pushing a radically anti-democratic agenda for America – backing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen, calling for restrictions on voting and even questioning the value of democracy.
… the 1920s marked the last gasp of the Gilded Age, when America’s rich ripped off so much of the nation’s wealth that the rest had to go deep into debt both to maintain their standard of living and to maintain overall demand for the goods and services the nation produced.
When that debt bubble burst in 1929, we got the Great Depression.
It was also the decade when Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler emerged to create the worst threats to freedom and democracy the modern world had ever witnessed.
Doug Mastriano, a January 6 insurrectionist and Trump-backed big lie conspiracy theorist, won the Republican nomination for governor of Pennsylvania (the fourth largest state in the country, and the biggest state that flipped from 2016 to 2020). Mastriano was directly involved in a scheme to overturn the 2020 election by sending an “alternate” slate of pro-Trump electors to the electoral college – despite the fact that Trump lost Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes.
If Mastriano wins in November, he will appoint Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, who will oversee the 2024 election results in one of the most important battleground states in the country.
Meanwhile, the major annual event of the Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac) – the premier convening organization of the American political right – was held this past week in Budapest.
That’s no accident. The Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and his ruling Fidesz party have become a prominent source of inspiration for America’s anti-democracy movement. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser, describes Orbán’s agenda as that of a “Trump before Trump.”
Orbán has used his opposition to immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, abortion and religions other than Christianity as cover for his move toward autocracy – rigging Hungary’s election laws so his party stays in power, capturing independent agencies, controlling the judiciary and muzzling the press.
He remains on good terms with Vladimir Putin and has refused to agree to Europe’s proposed embargo of Russian oil.
Tucker Carlson – Fox News’s progenitor of white replacement theory – broadcast his show from Budapest. Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows was also slated to speak (although he refuses to speak to the House committee investigating the January 6 assault on American democracy).
If America and the world should have learned anything from the first Gilded Age and the fascism that began growing like a cancer in the 1920s, it’s that gross inequalities of income and wealth fuel gross inequalities of political power – which in turn lead to strongmen who destroy both democracy and freedom.
[Billionaires and Republicans] may define freedom as the capacity to amass extraordinary wealth without paying taxes on it, but most of us define it as living under the rule of law with rights against arbitrary authority and a voice in what is decided.
If we want to guard what is left of our freedom, we will need to meet today’s anti-democracy movement with a bold pro-democracy movement that protects the institutions of self-government from authoritarian strongmen [and women like Noem], like Trump and his wannabes, and from big money….https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/23/americas-billionaire-class-is-funding-anti-democratic-forces
Hungary is a one-party, right-wing state where the ruling ideology encourages racial hatred of minorities (Jews and the Roma).
[Sound familiar?] And that is where American conservatives decided to have a party.
Mark Meadows [did speak there], and via video, Donald Trump himself. Trump beamed that he and Orban were “very close” and said: “He’s a great leader, a great gentleman, and he just had a very big election result. I was very honored to have endorsed him.
[Orban engineered a takeover of] state media … through generous loans from the state bank to allow Orban’s cronies to buy up most of the private media. “Have your own media,” he told the conference. “It’s the only way to point out the insanity of the progressive left.”
“We have to take back the institutions in Washington and Brussels. We must find allies in one another and coordinate the movements of our troops.”
[L]iving in what’s effectively a one-party state where contraception is illegal. Where gay couples have to travel to certain states to marry—if they’re allowed to marry at all. Where the local library won’t stock books on slavery. Where the rich are paying taxes at a lower rate than middle-class people, and the federal government has no money [as covid may again, for the sixth time, surge] and perhaps, given the Supreme Court we have, no legal authority to enforce its laws. And where the right-wing, anti-democracy media has more power than the mainstream media (I think we already live in that country). And where election results can be overturned if they came out “wrong.” https://newrepublic.com/article/166570/republicans-cpac-viktor-orban-fascism
American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded network of conservative legislators, has been promoting a national “Reclaim Education” agenda that warns, “The 1619 curriculum is infecting our schools”—systematizing attacks on the award-winning project by racial injustice journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and her colleagues at The New York Times to examine the consequences of American slavery and the contributions of Black Americans. Well-funded groups like Moms for Liberty, No Left Turn in Education, and the 1776 Project—which takes its name from the Trump administration’s clumsy attempt to discredit the 1619 Project—give right-wing activists talking points and strategic support for confronting board members at meetings and challenging them on the ballot.
Just as they did a decade ago with the Tea Party movement, which exploited frustration with the slow recovery from the Great Recession, conservative strategists are maneuvering to exploit anxiety and frustration after a period when schools were shuttered by the pandemic. “You’re just seeing huge frustration in a country after two years of Covid. The country has not come together to take on these challenges. It’s obvious that there’s a great deal of division,” Weingarten says. “And so, in that crack, autocrats like Donald Trump [and Kristi Noem] and people who want to use chaos and confusion to advance their agendas see a perfect opening for exploitation.” The plan, she warns, is to “scare people, lie to people, create misinformation about things that just aren’t happening,” and eventually get voters to give up on public education—or, at the very least, to hand control of the schools over to rigid conservatives.
“America is a country with an inextricable history of racism. Because of this fact, vestiges of our racially discriminatory past show up across discrepancies in economic security, health care, educational access, and more. And I get it—we’re very ashamed.” But, he added, “masking our fear of confronting the truth by rejecting only the elements of which we are ashamed teaches our children that they can cherry-pick data, falsify evidence, and fabricate reality.” Everett Blair
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/the-school-board-culture-war/
Fascinating. At the core of GOP politics is the one clear mandate: cut taxes; keep money in the pockets of the superwealthy. To that end and to keep the power to that end, the big tent was expanded and social issues coopted to ensure the GOP could always be counted on to keep the rich rich. But now in SD, the fringe of the party, the real social warrior fanatics are the ones holding the party line of cutting taxes — even to the extreme of destruction of the state.
Moderate Republicans who see an obligation to govern and make good policy have accepted the “evil” of taxes, and are getting challenged for those positions. It truly hs become a real-life ouroboros as the GOP who see some obligation to govern are pitted against the grand puppeteers of self-serving low taxation (and high profiteering).
This comedian had our sides splitting Shane Gillis. His whole set is worth checking out. Hopefully he doesn’t get the sabotage ol Alec Baldwin got for his impersonation of Trump…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y2DDhVoxEOw
Some of you fellows want to just turn it into commenting on how people look, or the clothes they wear, when the real discussion is about how effective young Ms. Mulally is in the legislatures and how smart or not smart she really is. I know her. She should not be in the legislatures.
But for you superficial types, Ms. Mulally does not wear torn jeans, and she sports really swell, large, and gaudy jewelry. So you can judge her on that.
Got all of your all goats with the truth on that one, eh?
I didn’t really notice, Gudz. I don’t have a problem with torn jeans. It’s just that jeans should be torn by, oh, fixing fence or some other such work one is doing, not by the manufacturer of the jeans. I realize it is (or was) the fashion for teens and young adults. Not sure it’s male thing, as much as with young women. Uh, Noem ain’t young, but she can pull off the look, so I have no problem with it. I guess she gets props from the young crowd for fashion, but not for her fascism. I kind of think the clothes fit her maturity level and her level of knowledge.
I used to wear jeans that were torn in the knee through constant wear and work, but the thing in my day was we patched it. We could make that jean go another 6 months. I actually did my own sewing on my jeans patches, thanks to instruction from my mom. She asked, “Why don’t you just get an iron on patch?” She was big on those when I was in junior high. But I was then in high school!!!! Mom’s are clueless sometimes.
grudznick is also a big fan of the iron on jean patches.
On torn jeans: I’ve pointed out the SDGOP leadership’s contradictions before in saying that candidates should dress up but not criticizing Kristi Noem for her sloppy attire. If she’s going to purge her party, she could at least show up for her chosen sycophants dressed like a Governor and not the way her teenage daughters did when they were still teenagers.
Of all the bad things we could focus on regarding Noem, we have to resort to comments on her physical appearance. Again, and again, and again. On a progressive blog. And then when called on it, people get mad. It’s a lot easier to talk about your ideals than live up to them, I guess.
Stupid is as stupid does, someobe said.
oh, right, as Democrats and liberals we are not supposed to point out that the emperor wears no clothes, or be subject to the right’s media amplified hypocritical political correctness. pls explain your point.
I’m not on the right, ffs. People can disagree with the tact of reducing a woman to her clothes rather than her character. This is the sort of thing I am talking about. We are supposed to be better than a bunch of people who want to hold sway over women’s bodies, but reduce a woman to her appearance when we don’t like her. So tell me who the hypocrite is, Leslie.
Dicta, I’d make the same comment about any candidate coming to an event in ripped clothes.
But I share the greater concern about which will be worse for the Legislature: another crop of radically right-wing theocratic yahoos like Tony Randolph, or a new crop of only slightly less right-wing Kristi yes-people.
but are you afraid of the right?
gender has no role here. well said Cory! or chauvinism.
i think we stopped the idiot from dog whistling racist, supremacist, misogynist tripe w/ her camouflage militia caps. you are welcome. btw, I knew you were not on the right, but did not realize your veteran service. thank you, sincerely.
finally the media is calling Trump a liar, openly. yes, it probably does reduce civil discourse as an ideal. that got weaponized by the right. let’s not lose this next election unnecessarily.
whats next—Pajama bottoms. the emperor has no clothes is important mythology!
Of course I am afraid of the right! The talk of stolen elections and the absolutely bonkers elections laws they have passed since, the overturning of Roe/Casey, and a litany of other things all trouble me. But you don’t show the other side how wrong that is by becoming them and making misogynistic comments about her jeans, her hair, whatever surgery people thinks she has, etc. It’s gross. I’d rather focus on her open corruption, her seeming distaste for the will of the voters, her CONSTANT campaigning instead of governing, etc. Come on, DFP. We’re better than this.
If it is a “turn the other cheek” horse that you ride, more power to you. Show me one country where the “meek ” inherited anything. Democrats have taken the ‘high road” in this state and have nothing to show for that effort. Repubs wallow in corruption and the voters love it, thinking its a way to get big government off their backs while it only produces voyeurs in their homes.
I cannot speak for others, but as for myself, I will use their tactics and if one gets in my face, I’ll bloody their nose.
All I heard: “I will sacrifice my principles in the name of winning.”
Cool. Let’s see how many.
Dicta, Physical appearance is the least important part of anyone, but the choices one makes in fashion and body enhancement may tell you a lot about them. I, for example, tend to dress as I did in high school, ie., rather slovenly, except I wear khakis now, instead of jeans. What you would understand about me from my appearance is that I don’t care about fashion. Now, if I have to go somewhere where I need to wear a suit, I grudgingly put on whatever suit fits at the moment. I often wear something out of season, like a tan suit during the legislative session. I never judge anyone by their LACK of fashion sense, but I do judge them for how much money and time they spend making themselves look different. Thus, when Noem injects her lips, I can’t help but call her “Porn Lips.” The more time Noem puts into her fashion choices, hairdos and cosmetic surgery, the less time she spends actually governing.
I will remember these post hoc justifications in future discussions.
Wheelchair Musings ~
Predicting that morphing women’s rights into a state’s rights issue will be the furthest amplitude of the Republican political oscillation.
Those moderates who voted Republican, only to stop abortion, will no longer wish to be associated with a political group with such selfish values.
The loss of national women’s rights will be the beginning of a grand reemergence of national liberal leanings.
Hoping to be around to witness it.
Remember when Republicans descended on former First Lady Michelle Obama for baring her shoulders? Imagine their reactions when a Governor Herseth Sandlin appeared in the garb Mrs. Noem chooses.
I think so too. Look, I struggle with abortion. And while I am morally opposed to it, I have to accept that there is a LOT less at stake for a guy like me in this talk and that banning them won’t stop them, but just make them more dangerous. Alito’s opinion was crazy, and some of the historic precedent he cited were, to put it lightly, antiquated. I just think that, in the midst of all this, we should recognize that smashing women about their appearance is also an age old practice that stems form an idea that their value is tightly entwined with their looks and viewing them as objects to be won. Also, let me be VERY clear: what has gone on here today and my problems with it pale in comparison with what the GOP is currently doing. I just have higher standards for people that post here rather than some of the absolute lunatics on the DWC.
Mr Pay, remember when Potus Obama got crucified for wearing a tan suit by magats who refused to believe the pics of their god Raygun in a tan suit? Nancy Raygun wore a lot of designer gowns, some of which she didn’t bother to return.
Why wasn’t Noem invited to Hungary for C-PAC?
Watch the link I posted earlier. The stand up comic, Shane Gillis had me crackin like an omelette. Making fun of Trump and dads who like Trump is good medicine. C’mon, I don’t want to be the only one on here laughing at his jokes.
Not to many serious blue collar job seekers show up in suits, just as not to many serious white collar job seekers show up in torn jeans and
flip flops. Key word is serious. Advice I received was to dress appropriately one level above where you are if you desire advancement and it serves me well. I have seen “casual Fridays” and some of my bias or prejudice against, does include pajamas,flip flops,the word “f**k on t-shirts, underwear hanging out, just to name a few.
South Dakota’s respect for women is revealed by the effect of the State’s trigger law and the reactions, or lack thereof, to the most draconian provisions that will be unleashed. As I explained in Cory’s Representative Hansen story a couple days ago, South Dakota will soon grant authority to the State to execute any woman that is caught terminating her own pregnancy.
Apparently SD Republicans are chomping at the bit to start killing miscreant women that try to control what happens to their bodies and lives. And since neither Cory nor anyone else on DFP has suggested my analysis is incorrect, nor otherwise expressed any dismay or horror at the potential execution of these unfortunate women, I have to ponder exactly how important such an upcoming State law change is to our own DFP commenters. I can only hope it is my obtuse and somewhat boring writing style that is the reason that perhaps no one on DFP read my analysis, and that is the explanation for the silence..
So while dicta makes a good point, his or her, and my own, concern about respecting or at least ignoring women’s choices in clothing and appearance seems perhaps a lesser concern than laws that demean women by opening the door to capital punishment for trying to control their own bodies.
I clearly stated that EXACT point, BCB.
BCB – Your comments, legal analysis, and opinions are without match on DFP. If we don’t respond with agreement, please know that we’re in lockstep behind you and your posts. At least, I am.
Thank you for being here and know you are loved.
It’s true the RCC misogyny runs deep in SD. The majority have such low self-esteem that standing upon the necks of women and POC is sometimes the only thing they have to raise them from the bar room floor, so filthy and covered in puking hog feces.
bcb, personally speaking, I am becoming innured to the depths magats willingly go to control women’s lives. It is not just Duhkota, but all red states and federal magats and the activist magat Scotus. I am beyond amazed at the amount of abuse women allow to happen to themselves by not voting or voting for magats.
I feel you, cibvet. And got your back like a red dragon tattoo, Leslie. And, like P. Aitch, love you sports fans. Ideas and all.
I am incredibly scared and enraged living amongst people who have no regard for mine; my people, my dead, my culture, my body, my habitat, my love, my worthiness. I share your frustrations, bcb, my dicta, and Mr. Pay. Perhaps you will go easier on us SD broads once I attempt to give an explanation. I understand why you might taste some trace of disdain for seeing women constantly rolling over and allowing our yellow hides to be used as doormats. Yeah, we’re still subjugated. It is so deeply rooted, we don’t need the chains anymore. It is a struggle to not become completely alienated and depressed surviving in SD as a literate, independent woman without drawing extra attention of the worst sort.
From where I’m coming from, an unmarried (aka fast, loose, floozy, bimbo. No matter how celibate a woman of a certain age, if you’re single, you’re a skank) woman without a living father, uncle, husband, boyfriend or brother on hand, openly demonstrating in the streets, demanding equality and bodily integrity will get your shameful, sinful buns a big ol target. With crosshairs.
It is necessary to worry about your reputation, because for most mademoiselles, that’s all you got to preserve your honor. Nobody wants righteous zealots to believe when you’re not raising an unladylike fuss in the town square, you’re fornicating and performing satanic abortions, then right back to the unholy scrogging. Night and day. Oh my word.
It is hard to sacrifice your peace and, ultimately, safety, to protest against the overturn of Roe v Wade. It has to be done, but cmon guys, you go first. Please. We’ll be right behind you and always supporting you and forever grateful for your bravery and valiance in helping protect our honor. We have the most to lose, regardless. And we will fight. Sucks we’re just damned if we do, and effed if we don’t. Royally effed. Bad situation.
I assure any man who may be wondering why we are so mealy boned and willing to lend our necks for giving any dude a boost, we never stop picking the locks on our chains. If we’re caught, the kids will suffer. We survive by our grit and our love and each other.
Instead of tapping your foot, waiting for us to get fed up and burn the whole place to the ground, get it warmed up for us. Don’t admonish women for being weak. Most of us aren’t even aware of our enslavement.
They say it’s a man’s world. Fine. Whatever. If it’s going to be a man’s world, then at least let us be the woman in it.
It seems weird, and terrible, to blame women for their own oppression. Somehow, though, here we are. Please don’t think I share the opinion.
All Mammal–Females are allowed in a mans world provided they help subjugate the masses and like all useful idiots they are kicked aside when they are no longer beneficial. It is not necessarily the norm of other countries but rather a left over white male psychology from
the vanquish of the natives or the enslavement of blacks or the rebuke of the female gender since the landing of the pilgrims.
It is power and until it is pried from the white males with the help of voter apathy, we are a second place to the Taliban for women rights.
The whole thing is a scary deal. With rampant societal decay and the good earth’s health in steady decline, attempting to understand one another is a much appreciated expression of love.
Hug and hold the kids you are blessed with. Practice an emergency plan. Let them talk to you about their fears and concerns. The murders of our kids yesterday brings me to my knees and I realize spreading love is the reaction I want our kids to witness. We got to do something about these guns finding their ways into the hands of maniacs. I own lots of guns. I think they’re cool. But I’d throw them all in the burning trash trench in the back 40 if it kept one person from squeezing a trigger. Just like the Roe thing, we have to choose and act. Its the future at stake.
cibvet makes a frightening but accurate point with by referencing the Taliban’s atrocious treatment of women. As best I have been able to find, however, it does not appear that either Shariah law nor the Taliban have yet instituted the death sentence for women who obtain abortions or their medical providers. See e.g.,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Afghanistan
In most respects the Taliban treats women much worse than South Dakota, and even denies general healthcare to women. But SD apparently tops the Taliban by SD coupling the denial of health care for women seeking to terminate a pregnancy with the threat of capital punishment as soon as Roe is overruled..
South Dakota’s ideological purists are incensed with Republicans John Thune and Dusty Johnson for caving on Herr Trump.
At his blog, Dakota War College obese Brookings blogger Pat Powers routinely smears principled conservatives who don’t bend the knee to the South Dakota Republican Party establishment. Pernicious Pug Powers, who makes a stopped clock look like a well-greased machine, salts his blog comment section with a seemingly infinite variety of aliases that threaten or jeer his political enemies.
That SDGOP condones, encourages and even pays Pat Powers to threaten, malign, bully and libel women while their party standard-bearers preach the protection of women is a measure of hypocrisy that strains human gauges. He has long been banned from mine and other South Dakota related sites because of a constant stream of bigotry, misogyny and other hate speech.