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.

It's a Dog's Life

The bitch killed the bitch! 

Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota and true believer of Donald Trump, reveals in an upcoming memoir that, in 2004, she took her female dog Cricket to a ditch and shot her in cold blood because she aid the dog was "untrainable" as a hunting animal.  Noem said that she would take Cricket out to train her how to hunt ans suss out game but the dog - a puppy, at fourteen months old - would go around and chase birds and frolic in the field or the woods.  In other words, exactly what puppies do.  

Noem says she wanted to prove that she was capable of making tough decisions, as if taking out a dog to . . . take her out would be seen on par with making tough decisions like whether or not to aid Ukraine or sic the military on demonstrators, a nudge to Trump to get her to consider her as a vice presidential running mate.   Instead she caused so much bipartisan disgust and outrage that even Steve Bannon - no one's idea of an empathetic guy - denounced her.  (No response from noted wolf-killer Sarah Palin yet.)

We all know that the country's two most popular domestic animals are dogs and cats.  Cats, as we all know, are hesitant and standoffish when it comes to humans.  We cat lovers adore cats unreservedly, but we know we have to earn a cat's love.  Dogs, by contrast, give love to humans unconditionally and with complete trust.  Kristi Noem violated that trust when she shot a dog for no valid or legitimate reason and took advantage of her power over the dog.  Noem is such an insufferable excuse for a human being that she should be glad she didn't try to shoot a cat.  The cat would have fought back. 

Despite having made herself Public Enemy Number One among members of the ASPCA, Noem, alas, will likely remain in contention for the Vice Presidency. Trump doesn't like dogs - he doesn't like any domestic animals, and I am certain that he, like Caesar, Napoleon, Mussolini, and Hitler before him, despises cats - and so this action will probably endear her to him.  A Trump-Noem ticket would be perfect.  Trump can be the judge and jury as President . . . and Vice President Noem can be the executioner.

Oh yeah, Noem also admits to shooting a goat on her farm because it kept butting up her kids and messing up their clothes.