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Hot air and ill-informed banter

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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Let’s Check In With Crazy Eyes

Let’s Check In With Crazy Eyes

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Dollar Store Sarah Palin, a.k.a. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, has collected another dubious honor. Her state is now the home of the largest COVID-19 cluster in the nation, at Smithfield Foods.

Eighty of South Dakota’s 180 new COVID-19 cases are Smithfield Foods employees, bringing the total to 518 Smithfield employees who have tested positive. There are also now 126 total cases of non-employees that became infected when they came into contact with a Smithfield employee, according to the South Dakota Department of Health. 

The 518 employees and 126 non-employees connected to Smithfield makes it the largest cluster in the country (644), according to tracking by the New York Times. The previous top cluster was 585 cases aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt in Guam.

This is the tip of the Titanic-sized iceberg in the close-knit communities where a lot of plant workers live. Kristi is taking a cue from Trump and defending herself on Twitter, arguing that a stay-at-home order wouldn’t have prevented the Smithfield cluster. No, it would have taken prompt, imaginative government action, which, for someone as useless and Kristi, is like saying your kid’s hamster should start solving differential equations. She just can’t do it, my friends.

By the way, since it wouldn’t have helped Smithfield, Kristi’s still refusing to issue a stay-at-home order, so it looks like the mayor of Sioux Falls is going to issue one for the town. Welcome to life in a red state if your governor is a Trump humper.

Reader Interactions

56Comments

  1. 1.

    trollhattan

    Evidently SD state law differs from Iowa. I learned there only the governor has the power to issue and enforce a stay-at-home order. Hopefully Sioux Falls can fend off their lunatic governor.

    WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—An unknown person attempted to scrawl the words “total authority” on the United States Constitution with a Sharpie, the National Archives reported on Tuesday.

    A security guard spotted the attempted vandalism on Tuesday morning, when he noticed “something weird” on the glass case protecting the priceless historical document.

    “Someone had written the words in big block letters,” the security guard said. “Plus, both ‘total’ and ‘authority’ were misspelled.”

  2. 2.

    joel hanes

    Gov. Reynolds in Iowa closed the schools sooner than I thought she would, but she has resisted further shelter-in-place orders.

    As I understand her position, it is acceptable for a thousand Iowans to die, if their deaths enable a thousand businesses to stay open.

  5. 5.

    ThresherK

    Did you know who Noem was a month ago? I didn’t.

    I have learned the name of a few R govs this week. It’s become just like the “GOP House backbencher” rule: If you never heard of ’em and then you do it’s because they’ve shit all over themselves in public.

    On the back straight Parson in Missouri is giving Noem a run for the money.

  6. 6.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Open thread? This is about my ethical, socially conscious publisher, Inspired Quill. I want them to sell a million books, even if they’re not mine. At the moment, the managing director is locked down in an apartment in Madrid. That’s called working from not-quite-home.

    Btw, when I saw the heading, I thought this post would be about Michele Backman.

    I just got back from a walk. It’s frigging cold out there, and I had to wear boots because there’s snow on the ground.

  8. 8.

    germy

    Among some staff at MSNBC, the briefings have been viewed as yet another proxy fight between network chief Phil Griffin and his boss, NBC News President Andy Lack. According to two knowledgeable insiders, Griffin has favored airing the briefings but has been more receptive to cutting away when they go “off the rails,” while Lack has allegedly made it known that he supports carrying them live.

    Per one network insider, top MSNBC hosts have appealed directly to Griffin to argue against carrying the briefings live. But the network has continued to do so, often only cutting back to its anchors when Trump gets off-track—a threshold that is increasingly difficult to determine, seeing as the president’s default posturing is one of constant meltdown.

  9. 9.

    Mandalay

    OT, but why do you call her “Kristi”?

    Do you call Gov. Newsom “Gavin”? Do you call Gov. Kemp “Brian”? Do you call Gov. Whitmer “Gretchen”?

  10. 10.

    randy khan

    I work with some people at a fairly large employer in Sioux Falls, and they’ve been at home for weeks. It is quite something when businesses are far ahead of the government on this stuff.

  11. 11.

    Sloane Ranger

    So, her position is that it’s an essential business, so they would have all got sick anyway. It’s not her problem.

    Apart from closing the schools, has she done anything else? Called for social distancing or mask wearing? Insisted on improved hygiene and safety standards in businesses such as 6 foot gap between workers, regular temperature checks on employees, better PPE?

  14. 14.

    scav

    SD to nation.  Eat shit pork and die — we want the dough. Freedom and the Heatland way!

    Seriously, endangering the national food supply for personal / local gain — to the investor class of course, the employees are clearly disposable as lives although handy as props for campaign ads. Capitalism tRumps all.

  18. 18.

    bemused

    South Dakota covid 19 cases number 1,168 today. Sioux Falls mayor instituted stay home restrictions in his city and got the Smithfield plant to shut down while Gov Noem batted her eyes at Jared Kushner. Sioux Falls is in Minnehaha County which is where most of covid 19 cases are clustered. Shocking to read 934 cases in the county today, a jump from 768 yesterday.

  19. 19.

    Ned F.

    @trollhattan: 
    Why are the National Archives open? That’s where I’ve stood in long lines to see those documents a few times. It’s always crowded in there.

  20. 20.

    Soprano2

    Gov. Parsons here is MO is giving her a run for her money.  He issued a weak stay-at-home order sometime the first week in April, and I’m sure the minute Trump says ‘reopen’, he’ll do it.  I’ve been seeing “We only have “x” few deaths and cases here in Greene County, why are we still closed down”?, proving that the Trump  humpers have no idea of what’s really happening, or how this actually works. I picked up lunch at one of the Paneras today, and talked to the manager for a minute. He said he’s down from 35 employees to 5 employees, and his boss is constantly harping on him to keep the waste down, while he’s frantically fielding orders left and right.  He says he knows it’ll be like this for awhile yet, but his boss thinks they’ll be open next week.

    Oh, and Parsons thinks we should all risk death just to vote; he’s saying that he doesn’t think the threat of contracting COVID-19 is a legitimate reason to request an absentee ballot. MO is an “excuse” state, we have to have a valid reason to request an absentee ballot. Since the state legislature is filled with Trump humpers too, I don’t see that changing before November.

  21. 21.

    Dadadadadadada

    OT, what do we think of Warren’s endorsement of Biden? I find the timing pretty weird, only one day after Obama’s endorsement blocked out the sun, and early enough to still be overshadowed by the Sanders endorsement. Perhaps she wanted to fly under the radar? Get the endorsement on the record without calling much attention to it so she can focus on her actual job?

  22. 22.

    Kent

    @trollhattan:

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Right? It’s an Andy Borowitz piece from The New Yorker. He’s pretty good at making things seem plausible.

    You mean Trump didn’t actually discover a sharpie- short-cut in the Constitutional Amendment process???

  24. 24.

    Kent

    @Dadadadadadada:OT, what do we think of Warren’s endorsement of Biden? I find the timing pretty weird, only one day after Obama’s endorsement blocked out the sun, and early enough to still be overshadowed by the Sanders endorsement. Perhaps she wanted to fly under the radar? Get the endorsement on the record without calling much attention to it so she can focus on her actual job?

    All the news reports were that Warren was ready and willing to endorse Biden at any time and was leaving the timing and forum up to the Biden campaign.  So apparently someone there decided just to just get it done.  If it was not done to your satisfaction then that is more on the Biden Campaign than Warren I think.  I don’t think there was any sort of subtle shade going on.

    Honestly I don’t think these endorsements by mainstream Dem politicians even matter in the slightest at this point.  Warren is a Senator and every Dem Senator is going to endorse Biden.  That is a given.  It would only be news if one of them pulls a Lieberman and goes in the opposite direction.

  25. 25.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @ThresherK:

    Did you know who Noem was a month ago? I didn’t.

    I did only because when she was a MoC she had a story she dragged all over Fox and the Federalist about how when her daddy died the mean old government tried to throw her widowed Maw off the old homestead, on account of the death tax, and that turned out to be not so true.

  27. 27.

    Dadadadadadada

    @Kent:  I had thought that maybe the Biden camp chose the timing, and did it like this to knock her down a peg. But whatever.

  28. 28.

    Mandalay

    @Sloane Ranger:

    So, her position is that it’s an essential business

    Speaking of essential business:

    One month after Amazon prioritized essential items by limiting shipments unrelated to wellness, cleaning and non-perishable home essentials, the Washington-based eCommerce giant said it will now allow third-party sellers to resume delivery of other products.

    Jeff Bezos wants us to get back to work! Thank dog that sanity has prevailed, and once again we can proudly order a bowling ball, a 10-pack of rubber chickens, and a prom dress from Amazon.

  30. 30.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I often call Biden some variation of Joe, usually Uncle Joe, I usually refer to Romney as Willard because of the rat movie (three-quarters credit for voting to impeach, though he appears to have stalled). I try to avoid calling HRC “Hillary” even though she made a conscious choice to campaign with her first name. I usually call her husband Bubba. I remember being creeped out when an Edwards fund-raiser called and asked me to support “John”. I don’t like getting faux-friendly fundraisers from staffers asking me to support “Sally” or “Bill”, and don’t get me started on the ones that pretend to be from the kids or, god help us, the family dog.

    Anyway, funny thing, first-namification in politics.

  31. 31.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Dadadadadadada:

    nd did it like this to knock her down a peg

    if you work that hard to look for offense, you can usually find some, even if its in your imagination

  33. 33.

    Mandalay

    @Dadadadadadada:

    I had thought that maybe the Biden camp chose the timing, and did it like this to knock her down a peg.

    Yet just ten minutes earlier you posted that Perhaps she wanted to fly under the radar? Get the endorsement on the record without calling much attention to it so she can focus on her actual job?

    Trollers gonna troll….

  35. 35.

    Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)

    @Mandalay: A bowling ball, a ten-pack of rubber chickens, and a prom dress.

    Sounds like Weird Al’s shopping list for his next video.

  36. 36.

    WhatsMyNym

    @Mandalay:

    One month after Amazon prioritized essential items by limiting shipments unrelated to wellness, cleaning and non-perishable home essentials, the Washington-based eCommerce giant said it will now allow third-party sellers to resume delivery of other products.

    There was nothing stopping you from ordering these items, they would have to come directly from the seller though. Amazon couldn’t handle the orders and wanted to limit what they were shipping from their warehouses.
    Many sellers ship direct anyway. If you have Amazon ship it, you run the risk of a faulty or counterfeit product going to your customer. Amazon puts all items together, no matter what seller sent in to their warehouse.

  40. 40.

    Barbara

    I was going to suggest calling her the “Wall Drug” Sarah Palin, but it turns out that Wall Drug is closed except for pick-up, so it doesn’t deserve the negative inference.  Which tells you how far behind Noem is from many of the residents and businesses that are located in SD.  I have read that South Dakota’s government is particularly nuts because it has fewer powers and SD receives more in federal assistance (farm supports, national parks, etc.) than most other states.  When they really go off the rails (like outlawing all abortion no matter how early or how harmful to the mother) they resort to referenda to take them down a peg.  It’s also one of those states where most state and federal elected officials try to ignore how good immigration has been for its economy.

  41. 41.

    download my app in the app store mistermix

    @Barbara: The other issue with SD politics is that they have no income tax, only sales tax and property tax.  Property taxes go to the schools and maybe towns/counties (forgot my SD government class).  Sales tax goes to the state but cities and counties get a cut.  Bottom line is the state leg just doesn’t have a lot of power so they fuck around instead.

  43. 43.

    theturtlemoves

    @ThresherK: Well, I did.  But, in fairness I was born and raised in that benighted state.  It used to be less aggressively wingnut, I swear.

  45. 45.

    theturtlemoves

    @download my app in the app store mistermix: My South Dakota government class consisted of a textbook that, I believe, still listed Joe Foss as the current governor.  Pretty sure he was dead at the time.  I also had an 8th grade history book that had the phrase, “Someday man may walk on the moon.”  I graduated in ’91.

  47. 47.

    ThresherK

    @theturtlemoves: I should have said “from away”. I’m half a continent from the Dakotas. It sometimes is a lot about geography and who is “near” you in a 1000×3000 mile Lower 48.

    By comparison, I’m much closer to Maine (my FiL was from there) and have seen thru Susan Collins’ act for much longer than most folks here.

  50. 50.

    theturtlemoves

    @ThresherK: Well, prior to this my home state was On Meth and the state motto mentions a monument carved into sacred lands by a man who was a Grand Wizard in the KKK, so we haven’t had the best run.

  51. 51.

    JustRuss

    The 518 employees and 126 non-employees connected to Smithfield makes it the largest cluster in the country (644),

    Sorry, Smithfield may be in the running, but there’s a lot of competition for “largest cluster in the country”.

  52. 52.

    Achrachno

    theturtlemoves:
    “a monument carved into sacred lands by a man who was a Grand Wizard in the KKK”

    Whoa!  I never heard that before and wondered if you meant the ‘great and renowned artist’ Gutzon Borglum.  Yup, you did.  One needs look below the surface, even of seemingly innocuous things, I guess.  I found a 1973 paper on the Klan in SD.  I guess there have always been authoritarian/nativist thugs there, but I never noticed when I was a kid.  Well, I noticed that Native Americans were not very popular.

    My mom’s from SD so I have some interest in the place, though she got out as soon as she could.  I have no close relatives there any longer.

  53. 53.

    Another Scott

    @Achrachno:

    SmithsonianMag:

    The son of polygamist Mormons from Idaho, Borglum had no ties to the Confederacy, but he had white supremacist leanings. In letters he fretted about a “mongrel horde” overrunning the “Nordic” purity of the West, and once said, “I would not trust an Indian, off-hand, 9 out of 10, where I would not trust a white man 1 out of 10.” Above all, he was an opportunist. He aligned himself with the Ku Klux Klan, an organization reborn—it had faded after the Civil War—in a torch-light ceremony atop Stone Mountain in 1915. While there isn’t proof that Borglum officially joined the Klan, which helped fund the project, “he nonetheless became deeply involved in Klan politics,” John Taliaferro writes in Great White Fathers, his 2002 history of Mount Rushmore.

    America has been a deeply racist and white-supremacist country for far too long – it’s not surprising to me that he was tied up with them (but that doesn’t make him a Grand Wizard).

    FWIW.

    Thanks for prompting me to look for that article.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  54. 54.

    Achrachno

    @Another Scott:
    I don’t know much about this but this quote seemed to support turtle’s comment:

    Copyright © 1973 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved.

    Gutzon Borglum, “sculptor of mountains, student of men, and once high in the inner circle of the Klan, assessed Simmons as a dreamer who tended to surround himself with weak men. ”

  56. 56.

    Another Scott

    @Achrachno: I’m no expert on him either, but my little bit of reading this evening seems to paint him as an opportunist rather than a die-hard KKK member (and certainly not a Grand Wizard).

    e.g. APNews:

    […]

    After Borglum left Omaha, his ascent as an artist began.

    He married his teacher in California, a painter 20 years his senior, and went on to study in San Francisco, Paris, England and New York City before creating several internationally-known works, including sculptures of Abraham Lincoln for the Capitol Rotunda and Woodrow Wilson for Poland.

    Not only was Borglum a talented artist, but he was a doozy of a quote for a newspaper. He used that charisma to advance his agenda. Time in the spotlight was often a blessing, but just as often a curse for a man rife with contradictions.

    He was a vocal supporter and friend of Theodore Roosevelt and a harsh critic of Wilson, yet he accepted a commission to sculpt Wilson. He had a well-documented disdain for Jews, penning a paper entitled “The Jewish Question,” yet publicly criticized Adolf Hitler and the Nazis for their treatment of Jews early in World War II.

    When Hitler’s troops took Poland, Hitler responded to Borglum’s criticism by ordering the Wilson Memorial destroyed.

    […]

    Borglum accepted the job, which he expanded to include Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, each on horseback. It would become his signature work in the years before Mount Rushmore, but Borglum’s involvement with Stone Mountain washed away in a tide of political infighting.

    “At the root of the trouble lay the fact that in too many ways Stone Mountain was a Ku Klux Klan project,” wrote the authors of “Six Wars at a Time.” “If Gutzon had been able to see the danger in time to get out of the fight, the mountain carving might have survived.”

    Due to World War I, work didn’t begin until eight years later, and Borglum was tasked with raising funds for the project — typical of his more ambitious endeavors.

    To raise money, Borglum aligned himself with D.C. Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of the Indiana sect of the KKK. Stephenson would go on to lose a political power struggle with Dr. Hiram Evans and served 25 years in prison for rape and murder.

    Soon after, Borglum found himself without a job. He was fired from Stone Mountain shortly after revealing the first completed aspect, the head of General Lee. Sculpted by jackhammers, chisels and dynamite, Lee’s head was well received by project organizers.

    “The dedication service at the unveiling of Lee’s head was better than Appomattox,” Borglum told the World-Herald in 1924, a few months after its unveiling. “For it proved that we have arrived at a point in our history when we are so completely one people that the north could join with the south in praising its great dead.”

    Shortly thereafter, he was fired, and he destroyed his project models, then fled an arrest warrant for willful destruction of association property. He eluded the sheriff to North Carolina, but the state’s governor eventually turned him over.

    His Stone Mountain project was sandblasted and commissioned to another artist, Henry Augustus Lukeman.

    “Every able man in America refused it, and thank God, every Christian,” the Smithsonian reports Borglum saying at the time. “They got a Jew.”

    The extent of his involvement and genuine interest in Klan causes are disputed. “Six Wars at a Time” authors paint Borglum as a willing participant in the KKK with some shared ideologies, but eventually distill his position to that of an opportunistic artist seeking political influence and cash. His wife, Mary, downplays his involvement in her biography of her husband, “Give the Man Room.” Borglum publicly denied any involvement in the KKK.

    […]

    He was certainly a nasty racist, but the extent of the KKK aspect of his life seems to be unclear. At least to me. :-)

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

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