The Day of the Dog

     Right about now, Cricket the dog is probably looking down from doggie heaven and snickering like Muttley. Or maybe she's anointing Kristi Noem, the woman who murdered her, with a golden shower.

     Former Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, a creature who makes Katie Miller look like Mrs. Santa Claus after smoking a pound of sinsemilla, got shitcanned by Trump. He cheerfully announced her termination, typically, on social media, naming her as the, get this, "Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas."

     Which sounds like something an 11 year-old would make up after being banned from playing Dungeons and Dragons by their parents.

     But it wasn't just that this overmade-up sociopath got fired but the timing and the manner in which she got the news. She was about to take the stage in Nashville to deliver a speech. She knew she was out of a job but, as they say in show business, the show must go on. She delivered the speech and made no mention of her humiliating termination even though the whole world knew of it by then.

     Trump then tapped Sen. Markwayne Mullin as his nominee to replace Noem, which took Mullin completely by surprise.

     At first blush, it looks as Trump did the first decent thing since stealing the White House for the second time but that would be foolhardy and misguided. Noem made Trump look bad and Trump can't have that. As for her squeeze, Corey Lewandowski, the human tampon... Well, his future is far more uncertain. Maybe Trump will name him the Fig Leaf of Freedom or something similar.

     Just yesterday, Noem followed up her testimony before the House on Wednesday by getting grilled before the Senate. Oddly, it was Sen. Thom Tillis, who's not seeking re-election, who savaged Noem the worst. Tillis ragged on her for killing her dog, Cricket, blaming her for not properly training the dog before taking it to a gravel pit and killing it before shooting a goat that same day..  (I'm sure Ted Bundy had days like that, when he just had to kill his way through a bad day.)

     The previous day in the House, Noem was called on the carpet for the outrageous expenditure of $220,000,000 in ad buys so she could preen in front of Mount Rushmore. And, it wasn't just that but the final destination of $143,000,000 of that nearly quarter of a billion dollars.

     It was given, without rhyme or reason, to a company that was formed just 11 days before the no-bid contract was given out (according to Sen. John Kennedy), to the husband of former DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, Ben Yoho (Yes, that's his real name). DHS's legal counsel, James Percival somehow said with a straight face, 

     "I have personally reviewed the allegations against Ms. McLaughlin, and I find them to be baseless. Nothing illegal or unethical occurred with respect to these contracts. Ms. McLaughlin was not involved in selecting any subcontractors. She is, however, a superstar in the public affairs world, so I am not surprised that she married a successful businessman whose services were attractive to these outside firms."

     So if there's nothing opaque about the transaction, then how come Yoho's house is blurred out on Google?

     That's the very definition of opacity.

     Trump doesn't mind if his Cabinet Secretaries are corrupt  Hell, he encourages it. Where he draws the line is if their corruption becomes conspicuous and can be traced back to him. If their corruption starts to rival his own, he gets jealous.

     There's no telling, yet, if those two jets worth nearly $150,000,000 that Noem ordered through the Coast Guard will actually be bought, even though Trump can't talk considering he accepted a gift of a $400,000,000 jet from Qatar.

      But Noem's 13 month-long tenure as Secretary of Homeland Security has been an endless skein of scandals from the beginning, culminating with her disastrous supervision of the crackdown on Minneapolis residents that resulted in the murders of two of them and Noem calling both of them domestic terrorists. 

     So lift a leg, dear Cricket, and bless your former owner with that golden shower she so richly deserves.