Tag: Governor Noem

Noem in South Dakota is Going to Have to Make Up Her Mind

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South Dakota’s legislative bodies wrote a law to keep boys and men from competing in school sports as women.  Fearing that the NCAA and their corporate sponsors would punish South Dakota she caved and attempted to neuter the bill at the collegiate level.  That bill has now died in the veto override process.  Noem has supposedly covered the two age groups, college and pre-college, with separate executive orders to achieve the same effect as the original bill and is reconvening the legislature in May to address this issue again.

So, what happened here?  I think the firestorm of criticism that she received from conservatives has frightened her.  She has been rightly applauded for her intelligent and courageous handling of the COVID crisis.  This has raised her national profile to a level where lots of people are mentioning her as in the running for the 2024 republican presidential nomination.  The last thing she can afford to do is look like a waffler on a social conservative hot button issue.  This is very similar to what happened to Mike Pence when he had to walk back the religious freedom law in Indiana when the LGBTQ mafia threatened him.  I think what she’s hoping to do is get a do-over.  I think she knows now there is no way to finesse this thing.  If she takes a strong stand and the federal government comes after her, she’s still better off than just caving ahead of time.  Plus, several states have also signed similar legislation.  Joining with them to come up with a united front to promote their position and maybe brain-storm a common strategy to combat the federal attack is a reasonable approach.

Even if Governor Noem does manage to walk back her earlier cowardice I don’t have confidence that she’ll have the courage it will take to stare down the feds once the guaranteed Supreme Court betrayal occurs.  But it is possible that one of the other governors will have the cojones to tell Washington where to go.  That would be something to see and could act as the first example of state nullification of unconstitutional federal laws.

At this point I think it’s only a fifty-fifty chance that any of these politicos have the grit to stand their ground but at least it shouldn’t take too long before we know the answer.  And from my point of view that’s all we’re looking at here.  We’re waiting to see if there is any leader who wants us to rally around him.  The common people are no match for the KGB.  We don’t have the resources to win a war against a well-armed and well-organized secret police force.  It’s going to take the legitimately elected governor of a state along with the backing of the legislature and people of a state to stand down the FBI when a gangster administration decides to crush us.  That’s what it will take.  But do those things exist anywhere in this country?  I assume we are about to find out.  And once we find out that answer each of us can then make our own decision.

So good luck Kristi Noem.  Choose wisely.  Your political career and a lot more depends on whether you pass the test you are about to take.  You flubbed it the first time but you’re going to get a do-over.  Don’t waste the chance.

Future Leaders of Free America

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I just listened to the CPAC speeches by Governors DeSantis and Noem.  I went over the substance of their speeches.  Both of them were bragging about the results that their states had during COVID and of the conservative policies and priorities that each had selected to enforce.  And they were right to brag.  Both states weathered 2020 with their economies intact and without having caved in to the stupidity that Cuomo and Newsom followed.  They protected the right people and let everyone else live their lives like free people.

Listening to DeSantis as a political speaker he’s okay.  He’s not mesmerizing, or effortlessly glib.  Comparing him to Ronald Reagan, he would be thought to be a lesser speaker.  But he was talking about the legislation he’s endorsing to rein in the Silicon Valley companies from de-platforming and canceling conservatives for their beliefs.  That’s amazing.  No other American politician has dared to even consider doing that.  If he can make that happen, he will singlehandedly revolutionize the reality of free speech in America today.  A man who is taking such bold action could be a man to lead us to freedom.

Governor Noem is a very effective speaker.  She spoke about how the press, specifically George Stephanopoulos, mocked her on television and begged Andrew Cuomo to take her aside and straighten her out on how to handle COVID.  The irony of how that sounds today is staggering.  Cuomo is being investigated for his incompetent and dishonest handling of nursing home safety during the height of the COVID crisis.  Amid all the overreach of his lockdowns he stupidly exposed the one population that was known to be critically vulnerable to COVID to direct exposure to people that were known to have developed the disease.  Comparing this to Noem’s approach makes her actions seem reasonable and balanced.  She also told a personal story about her father that was quite touching and also tied into her message on responsibility and courage.  She seems like someone who will be attractive to voters and she has demonstrated that she isn’t easily panicked into taking poor advice.  She also may turn out to be someone who will help us regain our freedom.

So, there are two leaders.  Depending on your count of red states we probably need another twenty-two or twenty-three more governors just like them.  Because it’s going to take a coalition of red states to fend off the unconstitutional assault that we will be coming at us from Washington.  But the good news is these two leaders seem to get it.  They are talking about the right things.  They are doing the right things.  I compare this to someone like Marco Rubio, the supposedly conservative US senator from Florida.  His speeches are full of feeling and ringing endorsement of conservative platitudes but he consistently caves into leftist demands for things like amnesty for illegals.  This tells me that we seem to be making some progress in who is getting into red state government.

So, it’s not like we are ready to have a Red State Constitutional Convention.  But we are starting to see the beginning of a movement by the states to push back against the anti-conservative alliance.  We see politicians who actually seem to get it.  And that’s more than encouraging.  It downright inspiring.

In Praise of the Free Americans

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Back at the beginning of February some clueless loser writing for the LA Times named Virginia Heffernan wrote a screed about her non-Leftist neighbor next to her vacation home that plowed the driveway as a neighborly act of kindness.  Reading the pathetic justification for her lack of gratitude over this act of kindness is painful.  Putting aside the lack of self-awareness showcased, what it brought home for me was the fact that our side is full of good people and their side is composed of feckless petulant children.

But this time I think I’ll ignore the Leftist miscreants and concentrate on the good people for once.  When I first moved out of the city into the suburban and rural areas, I was the newb trying to figure out how to negotiate the endless snow of winter.  Kids had to get to school, I had to get to work and just shoveling it eventually was going to run against the physics of piling too much snow in too little space.  And it was always the blue-collar guys who didn’t have the nicest car or whose kids didn’t have all the latest gadgets and toys who lent a hand or gave advice or volunteered to bring your kid somewhere when you were stuck in a ditch.

Luckily for me I liked those kinds of people.  They adopted me and taught me all kinds of work arounds and entertaining things that could be done on short funds.  Like ice fishing or where the best camping grounds were or the best cheap seats at the ball park.  So, if my neighbor plowed out my driveway, I didn’t write a snarky letter to the local newspaper justifying why I shouldn’t (and wouldn’t) thank him.  I immediately did thank him and asked if I could do anything to return the favor and Camera Girl would bake him a pie or some cookies the next day.

Like anything else there are no absolute correlations between political stripe and virtue.  I’ve had deep blue neighbors who were good neighborly people and I’ve known a few folks on our side of the aisle that I wish were behind bars.  But by and large our people are friendlier, more helpful and just plain more decent than the characters on the other side.  If I have to live next door to, or be on a school committee with, or have my kids on a sports activity with either conservative folks or liberals, I’d choose the conservatives every time and I’d be right 98% of the time.

So here you have all these good people.  And there you have all those creeps.  And the powers that be rig the game to punish all these good people and reward all those creeps.  It doesn’t take a genius to know that we have to get organized and find a way out of this trap.    We have to organize to protect ourselves from the people who are trying to do us in.  Somebody like DeSantis might be part of the solution.  Maybe Noem in South Dakota is.  And maybe the next step is these kinds of people getting together and figuring out a larger strategy.

But my point in this whole thing is this.  We can’t let these good people be destroyed.  That’s not just a crime against humanity it’s a sin in the eyes of God.  These are the best people on the planet and they are being treated like criminals, like garbage and it’s got to stop.  If we can’t find a part of this country where we can live in peace then we should form a giant migration and get the hell out.  Maybe we can buy a section of Siberia or Australia for a trillion or two dollars’ worth of gold and move there together.  Anything is better than letting these vampires finish off our kids.  That’s my take.