#gov. Kristi Noem

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) on Friday said it’s untrue that the National Rifle Association is filled with “old white guys” and little diversity, yet footage of her audience suggests the exact opposite.

In video of her speech at an NRA convention in Indianapolis, Noem is shown declaring that she doesn’t “look like a traditional NRA member” before discussing the overall makeup of the gun rights group.

“The media would have us believe that the NRA is only made up of old white guys. And all you old white guys can be proud and raise your hands,” Noem says.

“But there’s a lot of other people, a lot of diversity, within the NRA. Well let me tell you something: I may be a mom and a grandma, but I am the NRA.”

The video then cuts to a shot of the audience that appears to feature mostly older, white men.

Twitter users couldn’t get enough of the crowd reveal, joking that NRA members’ “diversity” in hats and T-shirts may help Noem’s case.

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[cannabisbusinessexecutive]

South Dakota medical marijuana businesses are facing a $3,690 fee increase

Medical marijuana businesses in South Dakota will soon face a nearly 70% increase in their annual state registration fees, rising from $5,310 to $9,000. “For a business-friendly state, this is not a business-friendly approach,” said Deb Peters, president of the Cannabis Industry Association of South Dakota. The Department of Health oversees the state’s medical marijuana program. The fee was set…

[arlengrossman]

The "Purse Dog" A.G. and Governors Who Shoot Puppies

Lots to talk about as usual on Monday’s Halitics, when I join veteran radio man Hal Ginsberg, living on the other coast (East).We discuss shooting cats to impress Donald Trump, Bill Maher’s right-on New Rules commentary about our weak AG, Merrick Garland, Trump’s trials and travails (Biden has overtaken him in a lot of polling), and much more….

[sher-ee]

[the-eternal-quest-for-balance]

Kristi Noem: I will drive razor wire to Gov. Abbott for him to do his job

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Margery E. Beck at AP:

A new South Dakota policy to stop the use of gender pronouns by public university faculty and staff in official correspondence is also keeping Native American employees from listing their tribal affiliations in a state with a long and violent history of conflict with tribes.

Two University of South Dakota faculty members, Megan Red Shirt-Shaw and her husband, John Little, have long included their gender pronouns and tribal affiliations in their work email signature blocks. But both received written warnings from the university in March that doing so violated a policy adopted in December by the South Dakota Board of Regents. “I was told that I had 5 days to remove my tribal affiliation and pronouns,” Little said in an email to The Associated Press. “I believe the exact wording was that I had ‘5 days to correct the behavior.’ If my tribal affiliation and pronouns were not removed after the 5 days, then administrators would meet and make a decision whether I would be suspended (with or without pay) and/or immediately terminated.” The policy is billed by the board as a simple branding and communications policy. It came only months after Republican Gov. Kristi Noem sent a letter to the regents that railed against “liberal ideologies” on college campuses and called for the board to ban drag shows on campus and “remove all references to preferred pronouns in school materials,” among other things.

All nine voting members of the board were appointed by Noem, whose remarks in March accusing tribal leaders of benefitting from illegal drug cartels and not properly caring for children has prompted most South Dakota tribes to ban her from their land. South Dakota’s change comes in the midst of a conservative quest to limit diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives gaining momentum in state capitals and college governing boards around the country, with about one-third of the states taking some sort of action against it. Policies targeting gender pronoun use have focused mainly on K-12 students, although some small religious colleges have also restricted pronoun use. Houghton University in western New York fired two dorm directors last year after they refused to remove gender pronouns from their work email signatures.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) and her appointed state Board of Regents enacted a extreme prejudicial policy that is anti-freedom of speech by barring employees from using pronouns and tribal affiliations in email signatures.

This is a naked act of hate and erasure against indigenous peoples and the LGBTQ+ community in The Mount Rushmore State.

[reality-detective]

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem told NEWSMAX that Mexican drug cartels have set up shop on tribal reservations in her state because they know the federal government has jurisdiction over those lands and that the Biden administration is "letting it happen." 🤔

Read more: 👇

https://bit.ly/4bvY7nQ

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Real life Cruella de Vil.

[1stpoliticalcartoons]

“South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s bid for Donald Trump’s VP slot on the Republican ticket blew up in recent days, unless the Trump team grossly underestimates how much Americans love their dogs and other animals.

Ahead of upcoming release of Noem’s new book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward,” The Guardian news outlet obtained a copy, and the biggest revelation appears not to be what’s wrong with politics, but what’s wrong with Noem.

Noem, who served in the South Dakota House of Representatives and the U.S. House of Representatives prior to becoming governor, is also a hunter. Guardian writer Martin Pengelly reports that Noem writes in the book about her 14-month-old (still a puppy) wirehair pointer named Cricket.

These dogs require vigorous exercise and can be rowdy and highly exuberant when not exercised sufficiently, particularly when young. They need a confident owner.

Cricket was a female with an “aggressive personality” who needed training to hunt pheasant, wrote Noem. So Noem took Cricket out on pheasant run with other older dogs for training. But, young girls just want to have fun. Cricket was “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life.”

After the outing, which Noem considered ruined by Cricket, she stopped to talk with a local family, and Cricket, apparently not secured in Noem’s truck, escaped and headed for the family’s chickens. Chaos and chicken death ensued. Cricket was just having fun, with no idea of what was about to befall her.

“I hated that dog,” Noem recounts in the book, finding young Cricket “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.” Noem appears to place the blame for that on the dog, not herself.

Summary execution from Noem was near.

After her day of frolicking and joy, Cricket was then led by Noem to a gravel pit where she was executed.

By then, perhaps all fired up to dispatch any creature that didn’t fit Noem’s view of acceptable behavior, Noem shot a male goat she viewed as “nasty and mean,” because it wasn’t castrated (again, whose fault was that?), and who chased the kids and smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid.”

The goat also met his unnecessary fate in the gravel pit, in a story that sounds like the South Dakota version of Tony Soprano.

Since the Guardian story and wide pick-up of the animal executions, Noem has not backed down on her position that the story was an illustration of making “tough, challenging decisions.” Defining the dog as a “working dog,” seems to justify for her the act of putting it down. But the more Noem responds to what the majority of people see as indefensible, the bigger the hole she digs for herself in her own gravel pit.

Death for these animals was the only option in her mind? What about rehoming, sending the dog to training with someone else? How about letting the goat have its own enclosed space and keeping the kids away? Could the goat still be neutered? Would a hose down have helped with its smell?

As a potential VP pick, the concern is that her judgment is this poor. We’ve already endured nearly four years of a president and VP with poor judgment – this country can’t endure more.

Noem’s story reminded me of a friend who said when he was an older teen, he took Halloween candy from the younger children. Even as a grown man, he didn’t seem to recognize that what he had done as a teenager was wrong. He still thought taking candy from kids was funny. And like Noem, he didn’t have any awareness that it was a story you don’t tell other people because it reflects very poorly on him.

Mahatma Gandhi, who used nonviolent resistance in the campaign he led to obtain independence for India from British rule, said, “The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” Noem doesn’t pass the sniff test.”

[corporationsarepeople]

“…Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president who faces 88 felony charges of his own and was adjudicated a rapist but nonetheless maintains his grip on his party.”

— The Guardian, in an article about Gov Kristi Noem killing her dog and her goat

Every news source should include similar language every time the former president is mentioned. Every single time.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Donald Trump’s shortlist for his running mate is full of the right wing’s worst political stars—aside from himself, that is. But reported vice presidential hopeful Kristi Noem has one skeleton in her closet—er, in the woods—that will not be helpful in the polls.

The South Dakota governor admits to deliberately killing her 14-month-old pet dog Cricket in her upcoming book No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, reported The Guardian, which obtained an advance copy of the book, on Friday. The book is due out next month.

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, calling her “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” and “less than worthless… as a hunting dog.”

After repeated failed attempts to train Cricket as a hunting dog, the straw that broke the camel’s back was when Cricket mauled a family’s chickens when Noem stopped at their house following a pheasant hunt.

Cricket had escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another.”

Noem wrote that she repeatedly apologized, wrote the family a check “for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime.”

“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

Noem recalls getting her gun and leading Cricket to a gravel pit before executing her.

Critics were quick to point out that the fault was not with Cricket, but with Noem herself. A 14-month-old dog is a “baby that doesn’t know any better,” Dan Lussen, a professional hunting dog trainer, told Rolling Stone.

“To me, it’s a lack of guidance by the owner, or training by the owner, or discipline by the owner,” he said, explaining that training a young hunting dog is a lengthy and slow process. “There’s a lot of steps that you take before you take it to a field and shoot birds over it.”

Noem’s record as governor of South Dakota isn’t clean, either. Several Native tribes in the state have banned her from their reservations over her racist assertions that Natives in the state work with drug cartels and neglect their children. Plus, Noem’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a high number of cases in the state, and she tried to prevent Native tribes from implementing their own COVID safety measures.

Her attitude towards canines may not put her in Trump’s VP doghouse, though. He has repeatedly called his opponents dogs as an insult, mentioned on multiple occasions about how much he doesn’t like them, and famously avoided having a pet dog as president because he said it “feels a little phony to me.”

[nodynasty4us]

Who will Trump choose for VP? (final round)

I had to delete the first version of this because I accidentally set it for only one day and I misspelled a name.

This does not necessarily mean who you would prefer, just who you think is most likely to get the nod.

These choices are the high scorers in the preliminary round of polls, names leaked by the Trump campaign to several news outlets earlier this week, and a couple of people mentioned by one columnist after the preliminary polls began.

As always, please reblog this poll so that more people have the opportunity to vote in it.

[beauty-funny-trippy]

#Gov. Kristi Noem, #gnome

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Aldous J. Pennyfarthing at Daily Kos:

Just two weeks after Donald Trump urged radical leftists to vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this November—because “he’s got some nice things about him” and “I happen to like him”—he’s suddenly taking a different tack.

In the wake of new polling suggesting RFK Jr. would siphon more votes away from Trump than President Joe Biden, Trump is stablin’ and geniusin’ up a storm, taking to his perpetual prevarication platform Truth Social to knock the wind out of the independent candidate’s campaign. His latest tirade comes just days after Trump claimed RFK the Lesser could hurt both major party candidates but “he might hurt Biden a little bit more.” On Friday night, as Trump dithered between wishing his wife a happy birthday or lauding South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem for her new and courageous puppy-murdering stance, he suddenly swung in an entirely different direction: claiming the guy he once praised as “very smart” and a “very good man” is actually a total disaster. And not because RFK Jr. would be forced to attend state dinners in a giant acrylic hamster ball to avoid infecting other world leaders with smallpox. No, it’s because Trump—and Republicans as a whole—are suddenly very nervous that Kennedy will loosen Trump’s once-reliable hold on the demon sperm vote. 

As Daily Kos noted Tuesday, new polling from NBC News shows Kennedy support at 13%—but notably, he “picks up 15% of Trump's support in the head-to-head while attracting only 7% of Biden's original voters.” But that’s not all! In the Marist poll, Kennedy gains a point; and “17% of Trump voters threw their support behind Kennedy in this poll, compared to 11% of Biden voters.” [...] Trump’s latest rants represent a stark departure from what he was saying just last year, after it was revealed that former Trump adviser Steve Bannon had spent “months” recruiting RFK Jr. to run against Biden and serve as a “useful chaos agent.” In June of last year, when RFK Jr. was still running as a Democrat, Trump said he was a “very smart guy,” a “good guy,” and a “common sense guy.” He even lauded the Kennedy scion’s allegedly robust poll numbers, saying, “He’s a very good man and his heart is in the right place, and he’s doing really well! I saw a poll, he’s at 22. That’s pretty good.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has increasingly targeted his campaign to MAGA-curious messaging to appeal to disgruntled Trump voters, and that has Donald Trump shaking in his boots because indications that RFK Jr. will poach more from Trump than Joe Biden.

See Also:

Salon: RFK is now openly gunning for Trump voters — and Republicans are starting to worry