Another One Bites the Dog

Dog-killer and and death-squad chief Kristi Noem was fired as Secretary of Homeland Security on Thursday. 

Trump fired her ostensibly over the money she was spending on the latest ad campaign for the agency, but ICE Barbie was in trouble already because of ICE abuses in Minneapolis and other cities and her increasingly obvious affair with Republican operative Corey Lewandowski, with whom she spent a lot of time in airplanes and in the bedroom . . . sometimes at the same time.  At what turned out to be her last congressional hearing, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), not running for re-election this year and free from the fear of receiving death threats, castigated Noem for having killed her 14-month-old dog Cricket and cited his own experience as a pheasant hunter who trains hunting dogs and his knowledge of how to handle young pups who act up, making Noem look even more pathetic than she already is.  She was fired not because of her most severe crimes but because her lavish spending and her idiotic persona had grown so bad it had become a public relations problem.

Beware, though - we might start to miss Noem if Trump gets the Senate to confirm his choice for Noem's successor.  He's chosen Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, which, like Noem's home state of South Dakota, is not a border state and is a state whose residents have little if any experience with border issues.  Least of all Markwayne Mullin.  On to of that, he is not a lawyer, not a security expert, has no experience as a manager, and is prone to outbursts, like when he threatened Teamsters president Sean O'Brien at a 2023 Senate hearing and challenged him to a fist fight, much to the chagrin of Senator Bernie Sanders, who was chairing the meeting.  O'Brien, apparently afraid of getting beaten up, endorsed the appointment of Mullin, a man so stupid he makes Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville look like Aristotle.  He's so stupid, he can't spell his two Christian names without a space between them.  Mullin is the only current Senate member without a bachelor's degree.  (To respond to the inevitable complaint that Abraham Lincoln didn't have a bachelor's degree, he never served in the Senate.  He lost both of his tries for a Senate seat.) 

Mullin is likely to be confirmed not because Republicans want to appease Trump but because Mullin is such an embarrassment to their caucus - and they have several embarrassments - they're eager to get rid of him. 

Noem, by the way, isn't going anywhere.  She will become the new "special envoy" to the Shield of the Americas", which Trump defines as a new organization of Western Hemisphere nations to combat drug cartels.  Sounds like a Marvel Comics league to me.  Such a job is as obviously redundant and unnecessary as being vice president in charge of dress code enforcement.  It's the sort of job you expect someone else to take care of.

Someone like the Secretary of Homeland Security. 

Oh yeah, you're likely to see her back on Capitol Hill in 2027 - answering (or pretending to answer) questions from a House committee probing Trump's corruption if the Democrats take back power this November.

The Samsonov Solution

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Numbskull has been a bigger mishandler of the Texas flooding that wiped out a summer camp and led to the death of over a hundred people - most of them children - than her boss himself. 

While Numbskull has been cosplaying as a border patrol agent and posing for glamorous pictures for her official portrait as the 33rd governor of South Dakota, flooding in Kerr County, Texas that the National Weather Service could have alerted people to if only there had been the personnel and funds available has left an unimaginable death toll at a summer camp that should never have been built in a flood plain in the first place.  Trump has praised local and federal officials for doing a great job in the aftermath of the disaster.  Except for two things.  First, local officials given funds from the Biden administration to build an alert system  instead absconded the funds for raises and bonuses for themselves.  Second, when it comes to the federal response, Numbskull did not authorize a search-and-rescue mission to Texas until three days after the floods struck on Independence Day.   

Numbskull not only failed Texas and the country.  She failed her President (who is not my President).  If she were a leader, she'd take more responsibility for her failure.  It's too bad that she won't own failure like Russian World War I army commander Alexander Samsonov did.

Samsonov commanded the Russian Second Army in an assault early in the war on the frontier region of eastern Germany that is now an area within Poland.   The Russians invaded Prussia and hoped to take Berlin to bring Germany into submission, but the Russian army's antiquated tactics and messaging technology allowed German General Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg to get troops to the Eastern Front quickly by rail and also intercept the unencoded messages Russian commanders were sending to each other.  The German and Russian forces met at Tannenberg (now the Polish village of Stębark) and, in short order, Hindenburg was able to delay the Russian First Army and completely destroyed Samsonov's Russian Second Army. Samsonov, in the aftermath of the defeat, cried out loud, "The Czar trusted me. How can I face him after such a disaster?"  He then committed suicide with a bullet to the brain.

Now that's integrity. 

The government is, as it should be, giving disaster relief funds to help Texas.  California is still waiting for disaster relief funds for the Pacific Palisades wildfires of this past January.

Ten Years Gone

It was ten years ago today that Donald Trump rode down his own golden escalator to announce his 2016 candidacy for President of the United States, a story that was at the time only worthy of coverage on "Access Hollywood" or "Entertainment Tonight."  And everyone laughed - it was just another silly celebrity presidential campaign, like that of Joe Walsh (the Eagles guitarist, not the former Illinois congressman) or Bozo the Clown.

No one is laughing now.

In the past ten years, Trump has pushed right-wing agendas, used his power to grift from the government, restrict civil liberties, and even used his time between his two presidential terms to wreck havoc in Washington through his congressional minions.  His cuts to various programs and agencies since returning to power in January 2025 have done more damage - mostly irreversible - to America in five months than anything Trump had done in the nine years and seven months before then.  And because the damage he's done to America in the last five months is mostly irreversible, that is, again, why I am a secessionist today.

But never mind that.  Ten years of Trump's impish mischief-making have pretty much culminated in the past week in the reaping of the mean and stunted fruit that Trumpism has born.  Among the lowlights:

• Trump has tightened his grip on the California National Guard and the Marines in Los Angeles, keeping the troops in place as he appeals a judicial ruling saying that he cannot.
• Two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses were shot, one of the couples shot to death, by a MAGA extremist.
• U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) walked into a briefing by Homeland Security Secretary and ICE Barbie Kristi Numbskull and attempted to ask her questions regarding the ongoing mass deportation going on in his state.  Senator Padilla was then accosted and seized by federal officers before being hauled out and pinned to the floor and handcuffed.  The Homeland Security Secretary continued to talk as if nothing were happening.
• Numbskull also threatened to have the governor of California and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass forcibly removed from office.
• Israel bombed suspected Iranian nuclear-research sites, and Trump may have gotten us inadvertently involved. 
• The parade.  That damn military parade.  

But here's some good news.  The Trump birthday military parade was an unmitigated disaster.  So few people bothered to show up that empty bleachers were clearly visible along the parade route.  The soldiers dressed in fatigues rather than dress uniforms, and they don't so much march as they walked.  A quiet protest among the Army personnel for being forced into such a farcical event was plainly obvious not only by their style of dress and casual strolling but also by a tank . . .

. . . with wheels that squeak.

By contrast, the No Kings protests that were held from coast to coast attracted millions of people, like this rally in Chicago.

Anyone not at this rally was likely at the White Sox ball park to hear Pope Leo XIV celebrate Mass from Rome via satellite.

If there was a winner from all of this mishigas, it was California governor Gavin Newsom.  Newsom has always been seen as the Gary Hart of  Generation X - glib, polished, policy wonk - but more recently he's been seen as such for all the wrong reasons - dubious relationships with women, conniving, willing to take right-wingers seriously by communicating with them, too slick for his own good. This past week, however, Newsom threw caution to the wind and delivered a sharp, pointed detailed attack on Trump that more or less accused the Dear Leader of doing exactly what he's doing - attempting to assume dictatorial powers and instigating trouble in the streets of Los Angeles as part of a plan to assume more power.  In other words, he did what most Democratic politicians should do but have not.  He's had enough and he said what needed to be said. 

A week ago, I wrote that Kentucky governor Andy Beshear was the logical choice for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination - that is, if the Democratic Party hasn't been banned under martial law by then - in my argument that we need a white male Protestant.  I didn't even mention Gavin Newsom in that post.  Now I look at him anew and I'm thinking, yes, he ought to be in the running for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination as well.

There's just one little bugaboo - he's a Roman Catholic, and of course a lot of white Protestants don't want a President who might bow to an American Holy Father in Rome.  So let's keep that little detail about Newsom to ourselves. 😉   

P.S.  You might have noticed that Kamala Harris hasn't resurfaced in the past week despite her adopted hometown of Los Angeles being under military occupation.  Most likely, she's ruled out another run for the Presidency (before Democrats adhere to tradition and rule it out for her) and she is now hoping that the next Democratic President will appoint her as U.S. Attorney General - the job she should have had in the Biden administration, because she would have been more aggressive against Trump than Merrick Garland was.   

Black Days In July

Not Detroit in 1967, as Gordon Lightfoot called it, but Portland, Oregon in 2020.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently sent special agents to "protect" federal offices and property in Portland against racial-justice activists whose demonstrations have mostly been peaceful.  The agents have been anything but that, arresting and detaining protesters with brute force.  Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Oregon Governor Kate Brown have been demanding that the feds pull their special forces out of the city, but Trump - wanting to burnish his "law and order" credentials with his base in advance of the presidential election- has obviously chosen to ignore their requests.  The acting Homeland Security Secretary - whoever that is - has said that state and local leaders have no right to tell DHS how to do its job.

It doesn't matter that Oregon - like every other Pacific Coast state except Alaska is solidly Democratic . . . except that Trump wants to demonstrate that he can lay down the law where Democratic governors appear to be - appear to be, that's the big disclaimer - unwilling or unable to.  That is the entire point.  Somehow, I don't think demonstrations outside U.S. Government buildings Dallas or Nashville would get the same heavy-handed response from the feds, because local officeholders sympathetic to Trump wouldn't need them.  And now he plans to send DHS agents to other Democratic-run cities; he's already announced plans to send DHS agents to Chicago.  And in Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot (who has nothing to do with Gordon Lightfoot) has suddenly decided to cooperate with the federal government, apparently being under the misconception that she can prevent tit from acting out its worst excesses.

Black days in July . . . Rose City madness . . . Remember in November.      

Trump Trouble?

Don't look now, but Donald Trump could be in serious trouble.

The Mueller report, which may or may not get out soon, apparently has more damning information and conclusions that Attorney General William Barr has let on about.  Trump is still saying that he has nothing to hide, and he's so confident in his non-exoneration in the Mueller report that he says he wouldn't mind if its contents were in fact released to the public.  He is safe  - so he assumes - in the knowledge that Barr will find a way to release just enough of the Mueller report to appear transparent but not enough to get him in more hot water.

On the other hand, Trump has made it clear that his tax returns are off limits, and he refuses to release them.  The Democrats are trying to subpoena them as part of an overall investigation of his business dealings, though they are not necessarily expecting to find anything that would lead to impeachment.  And yet Trump is curiously - unless you think he does have something to hide - resisting calls for a look at his tax returns.  (So is Bernie Sanders, but that's another post.)  He's hoping to divert attention from them by threatening to close the Mexican border . . . and firing Kirstjen Nielsen as Homeland Security Secretary due to her refusal to go back to a migrant-family separation policy.  To illustrate just how clueless Trump is about domestic security, he will, with the appointment of Kevin McAleenan to succeed Nielsen in an acting capacity, have had three Homeland Security Secretaries - more Homeland Security Secretaries in one term than either Bush the Younger or Obama had in two terms.      

Trump is so unpopular that he could lose the 2020 presidential election running unopposed.  Fortunately for him, the Democrats have to nominate an opponent.  I've already commented on nine declared candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, expressing a preference for none of them, and there may be twice as many declared candidates left for me to comment on before I'm through.  Ugh.  And even after I've vetted Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Pete Buttgieg, Tim Ryan, Wayne Massam (who?) and a dozen-odd more candidates I don't know from Adam or Eve, Unn D. Sided will still remain my preference.