362 Comments
User's avatar
Joe King's avatar

๐ผ๐‘“ ๐‘…โ„Ž๐‘œ๐‘‘๐‘’๐‘› ๐‘ค๐‘Ž๐‘›๐‘ก๐‘’๐‘‘ ๐‘ก๐‘œ ๐‘”๐‘–๐‘ฃ๐‘’ ๐‘’๐‘ฃ๐‘’๐‘Ÿ๐‘ฆ๐‘œ๐‘›๐‘’ ๐‘กโ„Ž๐‘œ๐‘ ๐‘’ ๐‘‘๐‘Ž๐‘ฆ๐‘  ๐‘œ๐‘“๐‘“, ๐‘›๐‘œ ๐‘œ๐‘›๐‘’ ๐‘ค๐‘Ž๐‘  ๐‘ ๐‘ก๐‘œ๐‘๐‘๐‘–๐‘›๐‘” โ„Ž๐‘–๐‘š.

This. He didn't even need to provide a justification, just "I'm going to take those days off, everone else gets them too."

Obviously he has done so many worse things to push the Christian Nazionalist agenda. He just can't help himself, he ๐—ต๐—ฎ๐˜€ to infuse his religion into ๐˜ฆ๐˜ท๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜บ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ official he does.

Expand full comment
Troublesh00ter's avatar

That's the problem with god-glasses. They tend to make the wearer think that EVERYONE is like him or her. Of course, they're not.

What floors me is what it takes to get people like Rhoden to recognize that.

Expand full comment
Sean's avatar

Not just every is like you, but they are supposed to be like you.

Expand full comment
Stephen Brady's avatar

But I think they know everyone is not like them and want to rub their noses in their apostasy. It is more Dominionist Wak-a-Mole and it is getting to the point that it would overwhelm the courts to put it down. This is all part of the plan. Gilead here we come.

https://handsoff2025.com/about

Expand full comment
Layla Rose's avatar

"god-glasses" that's a good one. I usually call them "Bible Believers"

Expand full comment
Troublesh00ter's avatar

I got "god-glasses" from Seth Andrews of The Thinking Atheist years ago, probably from one of his first public talks.

Expand full comment
Claudia's avatar

I am aware that I am coming from an angle, which might be quite unusual to an American audience. Here, Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays. Theyโ€™ve probably been public holidays before the concept was even developed. All in all we have about 10 public holidays a year. (The most recent one is St Andrewโ€™s Day - not available in England!)

Some/most are based in the christian tradition, such as Christmas Day or Good Friday - but I cannot imagine that a prime minister, first minister - or in your case a governor - would put out a message, which was so overtly religious!

The last monarch, QE2, was immensely personally religious but in all her messages she emphasised the importance of her religion to her but that this led to her respecting people of other faiths (and none). Tolerance really mattered to her.

It seems quite weird, that we as a country have got a lot of traditions, which are based in/on religion, but as a country we are not that religious. And this is reflected in how our leaders communicate.

Expand full comment
Maine Skeptic's avatar

"...signed into law a bill allowing โ€œconcealed pistols in bars and on public college campuses...โ€

If they were TRYING to get as many Americans killed as possible, could Republicans and Evangelicals possibly do more? As we've seen this week, they've opened the US up to terrorist attacks, INVITED digital invasion by the president's foreign handlers, are actively undermining the economy, are destroying all peaceful methods for social or political change, and are doing all they can to make sure as many guns as possible are in the hands of the drunk, the insane, and other key MAGA demographics...

Expand full comment
mermcoelho's avatar

And making it easier for pregnant women to die by banning medically necessary abortions. Why do they want to punish women?

Expand full comment
Maine Skeptic's avatar

"Why do they want to punish women?"

They're very insecure in their sexuality, and they can't stand being questioned. But it isn't just women: they're also undermining medical treatments for everyone by putting a POS vax denier and other anti-science demagogue's in charge.

Expand full comment
ericc's avatar

Not everyone; poor people.

Removing and undermining government resources is a type of class warfare. The rich will continue to get vaccinated, good health care, good education for their kids even if the public availability of these things disappear, because they can afford it on their own. They want to make it disappear because (a) they don't want to pay for someone else getting it, and (b) that 'pulls the ladder up,' reducing social mobility and thus the risk of being supplanted by some poor person earning a job/school spot based on competency. Keep them worrying about their next meal, sister's unwanted pregnancy and grandma's measles, ensure a lack of textbooks, and you don' have to worry about them taking your kid's place at Harvard or being selected ahead of your kid for that law firm internship.

Expand full comment
Stephen Brady's avatar

They are patriarchs. I am coming around to the belief that Patriarchy, Judgmental Personalities, and intolerance of change may be genetic personality traits. I doubt we can ever be knitted back together into One Nation after they have gotten a taste of power.

Expand full comment
Joe McGowan's avatar

Oh, the county is toast, as Maria Antoinette was famously quoted as saying which I donโ€™t even know if she ever said it if they canโ€™t have bread, let them eat cake. We canโ€™t even afford cake or bread. I wonder how many baby boomers have destroyed this country

Expand full comment
Black Hole and DM mourner's avatar

It's probably anti royalty and or xenophobia propaganda.

There a similar story with Louis XVI, on the day the Bastille was seized (July 14th 1789), he wrote "Rien" (nothing) in his diary. Revolutionary propagandists made it sounds later as if he mocked their coup. Actually, he wrote about a prior hunting party where he didn't catch anything.

Expand full comment
Zorginipsoundsor's avatar

Those are the hallmarks of the conservative brain.

Expand full comment
Joan the Dork's avatar

Don't forget making the measles great again!

Expand full comment
OMGeneres's avatar

My personal theory is that they are trying to start the civil war but don't want to be the ones who fire the first shot.

Expand full comment
Troublesh00ter's avatar

Very possibly. Create the initial conditions for an outbreak of violence in an environment which can be volatile to begin with, and wait.

It's not quite a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it's damned close!

Expand full comment
Linda Bower's avatar

I think they believe (want it to be) the โ€œend timesโ€ and they want to speed things up (by being horrible people) to get to the rapture

Expand full comment
Claudia's avatar

We had our last mass/school shooting in 1996.

It shook us so much, that we put in MAJOR gun control measures after that!

We value our children/people.

Expand full comment
John Roberts's avatar

"as many Americans killed" Not only in the United States but all 36 American countries in North and South America so that all the can be one country called "America." Starting with the Gulf of America. So many have no clue making it easy for the MAGA cult. God bless America?

Expand full comment
Joe King's avatar

Let me see. Allowing guns in bars means drunken bar fights will now have high body counts. Allowing guns on college campuses will lead to police shooting any protester that the governor doesn't like with the "they might have been armed" excuse. Prohibiting trans people from bathrooms that match their gender? How will he enforce that without a MASSIVE increase in police to inspect genitals. That shit can be shut down by sending a muscle-bound bearded trans man into the ladies room.

Expand full comment
Sean's avatar

Survival of the fittest. It hones your shooting skills for the coming war.

Expand full comment
ericc's avatar

They'll enforce trans bathroom rule with the concealed guns in bars rule...

Expand full comment
kevin oldham's avatar

Wasn't Wild Bill Hickok killed by a deranged guman in a bar in South Dakota while holding aces and eights?

Expand full comment
NOGODZ20's avatar

Yup. Shot in the back at Saloon #10 in Deadwood by Jack McCall, August 1876.

Expand full comment
kevin oldham's avatar

Indeed

Expand full comment
Zorginipsoundsor's avatar

The rapists on college campuses will now be armed with guns. Imagine the firefights between rival fraternities/sororities.

https://youtu.be/SYU6z0d_erY

Expand full comment
Claudia's avatar

Can I volunteer for the reverse action? Iโ€™ll go into the Gents. I am not afraid to go pee/poo there. Iโ€™ll probably be safer there than at some college parties attended by Mr Kavanaugh.

(PS it would not be the first time - Curlers in Byres Road was notorious !)

Expand full comment
Black Hole and DM mourner's avatar

When the wait was too long, it was exactly what DM did. She went, did what she had to do, and had never watched a man's junk.

Expand full comment
Zorginipsoundsor's avatar

Is that what she told you? ;)

Expand full comment
Black Hole and DM mourner's avatar

Did you think she was alone ?

Expand full comment
Troublesh00ter's avatar

Presumption and hubris. Those two factors seem to be driving what Governor Rhoden is about with his proclamation about the Easter weekend. Were he confronted with his actions, I would wonder if his response would be something to the effect of: "The vast majority of the population of South Dakota is Christian, and I am speaking to them." My response? "What about the OTHER South Dakotans? The Jews, the Muslims, the indigenous Americans, who were here LONG before we were and cared nothing about your Jesus. Don't THEY deserve consideration?

Larry Rhoden lives in a bubble, I suspect ... and it needs to be POPPED.

Expand full comment
Joe King's avatar

His response to your question would be the standard evangelical condescending grin while he says nothing and turns his back. Watch out for the state police who will try to find a prfetext to arrest you for asking a forbidden question.

Expand full comment
Troublesh00ter's avatar

My suspicion is that his response might also be something like what Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, and Michael Waltz have been giving to Senate investigators into the Signalgate incident ... which is to say, nothing definitive or coherent!

Expand full comment
Maine Skeptic's avatar

"My suspicion is that his response might also be something like what Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, and Michael Waltz have been giving to Senate investigators..."

You forgot outright, bold-faced, "see-what-I-can-do-and-you-can't" lies.

Expand full comment
Claudia's avatar

More simply: โ€˜you are not just the governor for the (majority) christians, you are the governor for ALL South Dakotans!

Behave appropriately!

Expand full comment
Bensnewlogin's avatar

Here is something Tailor made for the DOGE doggies to sniff , like real governmental waste coming out ofโ€” well, you know what Waste comes out of.

Two days of taxpayer dollars given for not working at all. And all so that this guy can have his performative act of public piety and get praise for it.

Expand full comment
larry parker's avatar

And the essential service people that do have to work should get double time.

Expand full comment
Joe King's avatar

Triple time. Double for working on a holiday plus the holiday pay they would have received if they didn't work.

Expand full comment
ericc's avatar

Ah but there's a big difference. The federal civil workforce has a higher-than-private-sector representation of women, handicapped, and people of color. The SD state employees, however can be assumed to be highly competent and efficient because, uh, shutupyou.

Expand full comment
NOGODZ20's avatar

Think I'd celebrate the original, pagan Easter named for Eostre, the Goddess of Spring (rebirth) and fertility (namely: sex sex sex).

Expand full comment
Straw's avatar

I did last Thursday when the spring solar equinox happened.

Expand full comment
Troublesh00ter's avatar

Hear-hear! I'll drink to that! ๐Ÿบ

Expand full comment
Black Hole and DM mourner's avatar

You didn't celebrate Ninkasi too that day ? Shame on you ๐Ÿคฃ

Expand full comment
Straw's avatar

I am not at all ashamed. It is just wonderful to have days that are not so dark anymore.

Expand full comment
Layla Rose's avatar

Good one, had to look her up. There's even a brewing company with that name. Very cool.

Expand full comment
Richard Wade's avatar

Looks like I'm going to be making this or similar comments frequently. Please forgive me if it gets tedious, but it's going to be increasingly important to understand what we're dealing with:

There's a famous quotation attributed to Napoleon and later repackaged as "Hanlon's Razor":

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."

That used to be good general advice, but in the case of the Republican Party the edge is off the razor. Both their levels of genuine, black-hearted malice and idiotic, clownish incompetence are so high that they spill over into each other, making a toxic brew. Trying to separate those two motives to explain their behavior has become a futile and pointless waste of time. They're irretrievably mixed in strong doses.

Expand full comment
Troublesh00ter's avatar

How many times have we said it? "The cruelty IS the point!"

Expand full comment
Straw's avatar

That explained a lot for me.

Expand full comment
Ben J's avatar

One little bit of sociology can account for both bits: tribalism. Tribalism has now been elevated to a religion, a mindset, a worldview. My tribe is good, your tribe is bad. Whatever I do to you is justified by that fact and that fact only. Except that it's not a fact, it is an opinion and a belief, which means it is "not of this world", but of its own world.

In the tribal world, the values are not competence or intelligence or love. The value is loyalty to the tribe. No other value is necessary. The malice is simply the malice inherent in tribalism. The incompetence is there because loyalty is valued over intelligence.

Expand full comment
Zorginipsoundsor's avatar

I prefer to call it pack animalism.

Expand full comment
oraxx's avatar

Fools like this always seem to operate under the delusion what ever they do is okay if they claim it was done in the name of Jesus. I would challenge this governor to demonstrate conclusively Jesus ever even existed, and that the Jesus story is actually true. As there is no independent corroboration for any part of the Jesus story, he has his work cut out for him.

Expand full comment
Len Koz's avatar

He'll consider the New Testament corroboration.

Expand full comment
oraxx's avatar

He wouldn't be the first Christer to engage in the circular reasoning of using the Bible to supposedly prove the Bible.

Expand full comment
Straw's avatar

Sadly they are that stupid and/or evil, and so are the not longer so Supreme Court.

Expand full comment
Bagat's avatar

Robert Reich

The incompetence of the Trump regime was on full display this week as top U.S. defense and intelligence officials shared planned military airstrike plans on a messaging app with a journalist from The Atlantic. This is a threat to national security and endangers the entire country.

But if we didn't laugh from time to time, we'd cry.

https://scontent-dfw5-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/487096291_1192896435537135_5625549212049091125_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_s640x640_tt6&_nc_cat=1&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=YnvNI_Ix124Q7kNvgFyZEKm&_nc_oc=AdlDsO9F5TNJjblibQZyYlI0ZmmbdCEZY4E4pK8VwUUOsPMIP_aHiBkHR_SpvdzGpVY&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-dfw5-2.xx&_nc_gid=G7UWU1tgpxPvm-kAlUpEiQ&oh=00_AYHdmfBszYQfiGrRBQKAuW57qFkZde9fQ2gXyVwbg5TLrw&oe=67EB7829

Expand full comment
Troublesh00ter's avatar

Oh, dear-dear-dear! ๐Ÿคฃ๐Ÿคฃ๐Ÿคฃ

Expand full comment
NOGODZ20's avatar

๐Ÿ˜„

Expand full comment
Val Uptuous NotAgain's avatar

He mentions the appreciation of the staff for their hard work during the transition, and it being spring, both are reason enough to give Friday 4/18 and Monday 4/20 off. No need to mention it being Good Friday and the day after Easter. The folks who celebrate these events will and those that donโ€™t , donโ€™t need to be told to. But thatโ€™s the point of giving the time off, to tell the folks that donโ€™t celebrate these Holy days that they better start.

Concealed weapons are not appropriate in any situation, but at bars is one of the worst places for armed people.

Expand full comment
larry parker's avatar

How are you going to drink your drink if you don't have arms? And the dart board would be useless.

Expand full comment
Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz's avatar

Use a straw?

Expand full comment
Straw's avatar

No thank you. I prefer to not being used.

Expand full comment
larry parker's avatar

Straws are for stirring.

Expand full comment
Straw's avatar

Nope, Straw is for record keeping.

Expand full comment
larry parker's avatar

Sort of. When I was in my gin and tonic phase, I would keep the straws to know how many drinks I had.

Expand full comment
Straw's avatar

Record keeping is what this Straw is doing at work. I don't drink anything with a straw. I just don't like the straws. (sugerรธr in Norwegian).

Expand full comment
Black Hole and DM mourner's avatar

Tant que ce n'est pas un martinet.

I will let you Google this one ๐Ÿคฃ

Expand full comment
Val Uptuous NotAgain's avatar

Huyuck huyuck.

Expand full comment
Claudia's avatar

If you are really really wondering how to drink your drink without arms - can I invite you to a pub crawl in Rose Street? Or if you like it a bit more โ€˜authenticโ€™ thereโ€™s Sauchiehall Street on a Friday night?

Everyone welcome!

Expand full comment
larry parker's avatar

Easter Monday?

How about Easter Tuesday and Easter Wednesday?

Good Friday Eve?

Expand full comment
Sean's avatar

I remember when we used to get the whole week off of school.

Expand full comment
Claudia's avatar

Lightweight.

Easter school holidays were three weeks!

Expand full comment
Sean's avatar

UK?

Expand full comment
Claudia's avatar

No, back home.

Expand full comment
Sean's avatar

Same query. The UK is the only place I'm aware of that takes 3 weeks off between terms. Of course, my knowledge is very limited.

Schools here are very different. They run much longer, but they lack school shootings. So, I guess it's a tradeoff.

Expand full comment
Claudia's avatar

The school holidays back home were as follows: A long break in the summer (6 weeks), 1 week in the autumn (originally scheduled so that children could help with the harvest), 2 weeks at Christmas (from the day before Christmas Eve to the Day after Epiphany, and 3 weeks at Easter.

Expand full comment
Zorginipsoundsor's avatar

Which is were?

Expand full comment
Claudia's avatar

Germany.

Expand full comment
larry parker's avatar

4 day weekend? Jesus only got a 3 day weekend and it was more like a day and a half.

Expand full comment
NOGODZ20's avatar

Not even that. Luke says Jesus went to heaven the moment he died. He even took a plus-one along with him.

Expand full comment
larry parker's avatar

What does "Luke" know?

Expand full comment
NOGODZ20's avatar

The Force?

Expand full comment
cdbunch's avatar

How to hide. He's almost as good at it as YHWH.

Expand full comment
RegularJoe's avatar

What'd Bo have to say about it?

Expand full comment
larry parker's avatar

They should duke it out.

Expand full comment
RegularJoe's avatar

And a lot of it he just spent hanging with a couple of his buddies.

Expand full comment
larry parker's avatar

Nailed it.

Expand full comment
RegularJoe's avatar

If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning.....

Expand full comment
Black Hole and DM mourner's avatar

And for that he got screwed.

Expand full comment
Holytape's avatar

I went to celebrate Jesus, but apparently he got deported.

Expand full comment
Joan the Dork's avatar

What a thoroughly forgettable character he is. How does he expect to wow the Republican base if all he's willing to give them is ho-hum routine Christian piss-marking? He's gotta step up his game. His career is on the line here! No mundane atrocity will do. His predecessor was Governor Puppy Murder; if he wants to be noticed following ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ต act, he's gonna have to be ๐˜ธ๐˜ข๐˜บ more creative in his performative awfulness!

Expand full comment
Vanity Unfair's avatar

My local authority, as is usual in the UK, gave Good Friday and "Easter Monday" as days off for staff. What they never seemed to realise, despite having been told annually, was that a large proportion of employees had to work on the Saturday thus making the long weekend virtually useless as a holiday. I am sure that the regulation was written by people who did not work on Saturdays.

Expand full comment
Zorginipsoundsor's avatar

That almost happened to us at the St. Pete Main Library. The Parks Dept decided to give the employees either a Friday or a Monday off so they could have a three day weekend. The problem for us was that we were the only division of Parks that worked on Saturdays.

I don't remember the holiday.

Expand full comment
NOGODZ20's avatar

Meanwhile, South Dakota ranks a dismal 43rd in Health Care.

Nice to see Gov. Rodent has his priorities in order.

Expand full comment