mrandyk

For the ethics board to say that she "may have" engaged in misconduct is highly representative of how broken state government is in SD. She has blatantly overstepped her bounds, but the party controlling every facet of the state government refuses to hold one of its own accountable. See: State AG running a man down with his car and trying to cover it up in September 2020, wasn't removed from office until June 2022, was only removed by the absolute minimum number of votes in both the house and senate, and only after he finally announced he wouldn't be running for re-election this November.

This may be worse than Herschel lying about how many kids he has.

I think Republican voters would generally disagree with the bats#!t stuff that winds up here. These voters will keep re-electing this insanity, but I'd argue it has more to do with said voters being disengaged rather than supporting what the elected officials are doing. If you don't plug yourself in and stay informed then all you catch are a few glimpses of your candidate, at most. It's also possible that I'm looking for good in humanity that isn't there.

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https://jonathanturley.org/ Read the front page of this guy's website and tell me you think he is someone worth standing behind (let alone someone who is mentally balanced).

I lived in Minneapolis until a year ago. Traffic went away in March 2020 and people started going upwards of 100 MPH on the freeway. Traffic started coming back and those people didn't seem to change their behavior. Extreme example, but I'm sure it's relatable everywhere.

I have only been back in SD for a year, so thankfully I have missed a couple years of her tenure, but every time she comes up it is just infuriatingly stupid. Below is a quick list of what I've noticed. Not all of it is equally inept, but perhaps so severely dumb that it sticks in my mind. Noem spends no time in South Dakota - She cares only for her national profile and is constantly out on tour doing media appearances. I swear she is on a news program every other Sunday backing up whatever the latest GOP initiatives are. We saw her again today apparently in Georgia to help campaign for Herschel Walker. You can Google news articles relating to her and see just how often she is anywhere but near her constituents. Pretty wild for a job that should keep you inside your state's borders most of the time. Marijuana - On the 2020 ballot SD voted to legalize medical and recreational marijuana. Medical has been implemented, but Noem battled recreational and got the state supreme court to throw it out. The people told her what they wanted, and she looked for any way to overturn the will of the people rather than serve it. Not the first time that has happened in this state (see IM 22 in 2016, followed by Amendment W in 2018). Amendment C - Noem and the state legislature snuck a constitutional amendment onto the ballot this summer that would make it so that any ballot measure appropriating $10 million of state funds over the first 5 years after passage (so, $2 million per year) would require 60% of the vote instead of a simple majority. The timing of the vote was at a time when only registered Republicans voting in their primary would show up (Democrats effectively don't have primaries in this state. My Independent ballot had this amendment and the county commissioner on it). God forbid we the people try to spend $2 million out of the $6.2 billion budget. Then a month later the state posted a $115 million surplus. The thinking behind this proposed amendment would be so that voters likely won't be able to expand Medicaid on their own, or legalize recreational marijuana.......again. University Diversity - This Spring she abolished the diversity offices at the state universities. She claimed that they had been infiltrated by radical left wing politics and were not serving their intended purpose. Okay, how is that possible? The governor and state legislature have been controlled by Republicans uninterrupted since the 70s. We mean business - She has run a PSA about SD "meaning business" for a while. I have no idea what it costs, and I only became aware of it because I was seeing ads for it while living in Minneapolis. Why exactly would you spend money advertising to the general public of a city hundreds of miles away from your state? The ads had absolutely nothing to do with tourism. They were strictly about moving your business to SD. Seems to me like it would make much more sense to target the business community specifically. Meth - Another PSA, one you may have seen because it caught national attention for being so bad. "Meth, we're on it". Uhh...yeah, there are meth heads out there. I think if anything we are just raising awareness for meth with this. Then, of course, the ad agency who put it together was Minneapolis based. God forbid we keep that money inside the state and in the hands of people who might take some pride in SD. CRT - Noem has been ranting about Critical Race Theory for...however long it has been a GOP talking point. She even got Ben Carson to come out to Pierre and talk to the state legislature about it (or probably to try and build her national profile). She signed an executive order in April to remove CRT from the state curriculum. There was a probe into whether CRT exists in SD classrooms that finally was unveiled two days ago, they found no evidence of it being taught, but Noem is forging ahead anyways to "proactively remove CRT before it has any opportunity to take hold in our schools". Truly a solution looking for a problem. 95% of teachers in the state are white. They aren't going to preach about white privilege. Ethics violations - I'm sure there are plenty, but using the state airplanes with impunity and interfering with the Department of Labor to get her daughter real estate appraisal licensure have to be the most egregious. Her daughter couldn't pass the test. Failed it twice, which is all you are allowed. Noem intervened, got her daughter a third attempt, and she received the license. The director who had to be "coaxed" was then pressured to retire, filed an age discrimination suit against the state, and settled for $200k. I think the economy in South Dakota is probably good by whatever metric you pick, but that's just riding the upward trend that Sioux Falls has been on the last 30+ years. She spouts some BS about keeping the state open for business during covid, but she just mirrored what every other red state did where the local governments had to face the ridicule of trying to enforce any safety measures. All in all, she is actually quite unpopular when you consider how red the state is. Democrats haven't held any sort of office in this state in a looooong time. Only won election by a couple points in 2018, and hopefully does worse this November.

Oh look, it's Governor Dips#!t continuing to spend her time and my money anywhere besides SD, and focusing on anything besides the problems facing her constituents. Can't wait for her to take her ambitions to the national level and fall flat on her face.

I believe this country needs a strong conservative party. It gets harder and harder for me to make this argument to my friends when everything we see from the "conservative" party is a blatant rejection of conservative values. They ate another one of their own tonight for upholding conservative values. I hope some day that party figures out a way to rid themselves of the cult that has taken over and burnt down any remaining principles they had.

You've got to be a special kind of deranged to be posting your political conspiracy theories on LinkedIn.

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Incidentally, she also will not release the results of the probe into whether CRT is being taught in SD schools. Either way, I'm sure this will help the teacher shortage in the state with nearly the worst pay in the country. If ever there were a person who embodied solutions looking for problems. Worst f#&%ing governor ever.

Why should I research anything when I can just shout?

I've been thinking about this one for a while. I wanted to say that MJT's small portion of Georgia must be really disengaged and just voting for the R, but then you've got a brain dead Herschel Walker destroying the competition in the senate primary. He has no experience in anything, refuses to debate his opponents, and anyone who has heard him speak has come away dumber for having done so. All I can come back to is the endorsement from Dear Leader. Apparently that is the only thing that matters anymore.

Perfectly acceptable so long as they wear a stupid hat.

Yes, so long as your party's platform is predominantly based on hatred. You might have gotten screwed along the way, but if you perceive that a group of people you dislike are getting shafted worse then the loyalty will be there.

He makes the libs angry.

I believe it all boiled down to the fact that UNL does not have a medical school. Tightly affiliated with UNMC, but that is its own university. It's a unique quirk to how the university system is setup in Nebraska. I've never heard of any other state separating its medical school as a standalone institution. Acting like UNMC is part of UNL would be about the same as saying Iowa and Iowa State are conjoined because they are part of the same system. I get why the AAU decision was made.

I also am just now finally seeing my close circle run rampant with covid, after someone brought covid to our family Christmas gathering on the 1st. I hadn't had anyone really close to me test positive yet, and now absolutely everyone has it. I tested positive. I feel absolutely fine though and would be at work if I didn't know any better. I had my booster shot about 3 weeks ago so that's probably why I don't feel anything, minus a very minor headache that lasted about a day and a half. So I've been at home doing a lot of odd jobs that I had been putting off. My pregnant wife sounds like hell. About 4 straight days now of her coughing frequently through the entire day. She didn't have her booster and it has been 7 months since her second shot. Wish I could trade spots with her. 4 of my 5 siblings tested positive, as well as the two spouses from that group. My 5th sibling did not get tested and is in Mexico right now because she had a vacation scheduled. Don't worry, during our family gathering she shared with us that she is wise and procured some home test kits for when she returns. Can't trust the Mexicans with this covid business... My parents refuse to get tested. So they are both running around, presumptively spreading the virus. My mother says she just has a cough and feels fine. She makes her living working with the general public. No amount of shame from the bulk of their family will get through to them. It's like some kind of point of pride to be stronger than the virus and not be sick. Living in ignorance and spreading the disease. Next time I hear them complain about covid I'll be sure to remind them that they are part of the problem.

I think on Thanksgiving my county (over a million residents) posted zero new cases and deaths, and I jokingly announced that we finally beat this thing. I agree that it's very notable that deaths have dramatically declined these past two months, even while new cases have not really declined. It's alarming to me that cases have not declined despite 20% of our population now being fully vaccinated (with tens of millions more partially vaccinated), but it should seem that the vaccine is effective at keeping people alive. Still not done though. Wear a mask and convince everyone you know to get a shot.

Go ahead and tell us what you think the Trump administration did. Act like a bunch of profit driven companies only made vaccines because of him? All while actively undermining anything that would mitigate the pandemic? We all know Trump famously went on TV to get the vaccine to help convince his cult that it's both safe and a responsible thing to do.

Yes, Trump notably even went as far as to use the Defense Production Act to ensure that we used our resources to produce vaccines as quickly as possible. You also have to laud the guidance provided to states to assist in the rollout and logistics involved. And how could we forget the massive PSA campaign he underwent to convince everyone that the vaccine is necessary to achieve herd immunity? One thing we can be sure of though, is that Operation Warp Speed produced the modern miracle of a vaccine. It is simply a coincidence that multiple companies driven by capitalism, in multiple countries, simultaneously broke through with their own versions of this miracle. Truly, I can't fathom how much worse off we would be without Trump. Biden is clearly just riding that train of leadership. We all know how closely the two administrations worked together in transition and the results show it.

I can't imagine seeing this type of imagery created for Biden. I wonder what the difference is.

"It's complicated, so we should just ignore the whole thing"