A Facebook friend sent me this today, they used my infamous Screaming Noem image to make a funny. Not sure what it means, but made me laugh. I created the image years ago from a photograph I saved from Noem’s blog when she was a state legislator. Meow.
Neitzert’s political heros? TenHaken and Noem. Hilarious. He also said that he looked up to Paul’s leadership because he has the ability to admit when he is wrong. Gee, Greg, when are you going to apologize for your votes on the auditor, the admin building and bunker ramp? Oh, that’s right, you are a hypocrite. Nevermind.
As I started digging around on Noem’s recent bullying efforts with the Mayor and now the Tribes, one name came up quite a bit, Corey Lewandowski.
You may or may not know that Corey was Trump’s campaign manager for president the last time around. He has also consulted the president during his presidency.
As several blogs have reported, their is a rumor swirling around that if Trump gets re-elected, he is going to tap Noem for Secretary of Agriculture. This supposed secret deal was concocted by Corey, and the rumor is he is pulling the puppet strings with how Noem has been reacting to the pandemic. Including pushing back on stay-at-home orders, telling our mayor what to do (and getting him to apologize publicly and say he was wrong and she was right). I’m also sure the sudden change in getting tough on the tribes has more to do with Trump and Lewandowski than it does with Noem. A freaking paralegal could tell you that the state has NO jurisdiction over the reservations.
See, Noem wants that cabinet position so badly, she will do anything, including handing Rhoden over to us as governor. Pierre will become one big Rodeo Cocktail Party . . . wait . . . it already is.
I wish our media would do some more digging around on this. I can tell you the TV studio in her basement wasn’t put there to better inform South Dakotans. Noem wants to go back to DC so bad she can taste it, and she’ll trample anyone to get there, with the help of Corey, of course.
I heard about this about a month ago;
Smithfield Foods has been trying to scare us away from restricting its activities at its coronavirus-riddled Sioux Falls plant by warning that any disruption of its vital activities could lead to a meat shortage. Yet even as they lobbied for an executive order from the White House to immunize their facilities from state shutdown orders, Smithfield and other mega-meatmongers have been shipping more pork to China:
About a month ago I got a tip from a reader that a certain cold storage warehouse in Sioux Falls had about 9 months worth of Smithfield product stacked up in the facility ‘awaiting shipment’. I asked this person why don’t they just distribute it already in the United States, especially with some food shortages. His answer, “The labels are in Mandarin. It’s headed to China but are struggling to get it shipped.”
So while I understand supplying food to Americans as essential, I’m not certain Americans risking their lives to pack food for China is essential. It reminds me of the XL pipeline that ships oil from Canada through the US to be put on tankers in the Gulf that go to China.
And we wonder why some of us ‘vilify’ the pork packer.
Over the past week there has been some criticism towards TenHaken on how he has been handling the Covid ordinances and restrictions in Sioux Falls and most of it is coming from the movers and shakers in the SD Republican Party.
A certain blogger who takes his marching orders directly from the state’s party leadership has been very critical of TenHaken’s leadership.
It baffled me at first that the same guy who benefitted from Paul helping him hide his private business on musical servers would suddenly turn his back on his BFF.
He certainly wasn’t doing it on his own, he has never done anything on his own.
The rumor going around was that there was a dustup between TenHaken, the party leadership and one of Paul’s staffers (you can take a good guess who that is). I don’t have anymore details than that, but we do know there has been a fractured SD Republican party ever since Noem and Jackley duked it out and there now are several factions in the party going many different directions.
I’ve also noticed that when Paul talks on the radio or on FB he says he belongs to the party of Sioux Falls and isn’t a Republican or Democratic mayor. Yes, Paul, it is a non-partisan position, but you are registered Republican.
Will this dustup lead Paul to do what Bucktooth & Bowlcut did towards the end of his 2nd term and register as a Indy? Doubtful. But one wonders who got to him. Some have suggested it was Noem herself while others said it was the Iowa business owner who runs the party. It may have been both.
I have heard from legislators who serve on committees in Pierre that when you go into a meeting with the governor, she runs the room and won’t take any guff from anybody. She also likes to make veiled threats if you don’t do what she says.
Something has changed in Paul over the past week, and I don’t think those changes in his attitude came from inside him – I think someone gave him an attitude adjustment.
l3wis