Well, we all know that politicians like to fib a little to make themselves look good, it doesn’t matter what stripe they are from. But Noem really stretches the truth during her speech at CPAC today. Here are some highlights;

• She said South Dakota was the only state not to order businesses or churches to close or people wear masks. While there was NO directive from her office, cities across the state passed mandates on masks and businesses, and ironically those communities saw their cases drop.

• She said she didn’t define what an essential business is. But the CDC and Feds did, and so did several cities in South Dakota.

• She talked about keeping the schools open. While this is true, it had little to do with keeping them in the classroom it had to do with the lousy broadband and internet access across the state. Kudos to Mayor TenHaken for making this a recent priority in Sioux Falls. Once again local government has to step up to make up for her lack of leadership.

• She also took a dig at Dr. Fauci about how he was wrong about hospital capacity and how South Dakota managed it well. Quite the opposite, while we dodged a bullet, the major hospitals in the state had to transport patients out of state because of capacity issues, some dying later and many nursing homes became covid death camps. In fact one of the reasons South Dakota ranks 7th in the nation for deaths is because of the elderly deaths at nursing homes.

• She claims the media lied about how bad it got with Covid in the state. Remember because of the Smithfield outbreak due to the lack of the SD Department of Health, the Sioux Falls Department of Health and at first the CDC not mandating safe working procedures it was the number one hotspot in the nation. I also think if that outbreak didn’t happen, our Covid numbers probably would have been manageable. Her and Mayor Stoneless did eventually blame it on poor hygiene of immigrants. Noem seems to think the best way to achieve Liberty and Freedom is by doing nothing.

• She claims that our economy in South Dakota is booming. Sure, if you are rich. Instead giving the Federal Covid money to individuals or other Covid prevention and healthcare (like public vaccination sites), she handed it out to businesses, like CBD stores and Go-Kart tracks. Over 70% of South Dakotans make under a living wage and of that 70% many are living in poverty. State Government in South Dakota is booming because the Feds bailed out the state and she handed the money over to business owners that have NO intention of trickling it down to their employees. South Dakota has one of the highest number of working moms and people with more than one job.

• She continues to push the big lie about all the freedom and RIGHTS we have in South Dakota, yet Noem won’t tell us how she spends our money on things like security and plane trips, her and the legislature continue to try to overturn the will of the voters when it comes to the initiative process or the right to have an abortion, she has dismantled regulation that would keep our waterways safe from CAFO’s and runoff, we also have very few worker rights or proper safety regulation and when she had an opportunity to extend special unemployment benefits to South Dakotans she said ‘No Thank You’. As I told someone the other day, we have so much FREEDOM in South Dakota, it may just kill us.

• She also says the only way to change things in this country is by electing conservative leaders. As I pointed out before the November election, we tried a Republican Senate and President the last four years and NOTHING was accomplished, except more division, chaos, racism and a crumbling healthcare system. If this is your idea of great leadership from conservatives you really need to see a shrink. More of the same isn’t the answer, I think almost 80 million voters sent that clear message.

• She finishes by telling her famous BS story about how she took over the family business and turned it around. She never finishes the story by telling people the millions in farm subsidies she has received from you and me, the taxpayers.

Kristi may fart some lines at this get together about the greatness of conservatism, but secretly she is one of the biggest socialists in the Republican Party never missing an opportunity to handout taxpayer funded welfare to herself and her big business supporters in the state while keeping the rest of us in the gutter.