Showing posts with label Kristi Noem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kristi Noem. Show all posts

Thursday, April 2, 2026

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 122nd Edition. Trouble with the Trump 'wimmins", Hypocrisy in the Trump Administration. The disappearing and reappearing J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio.

News reports this morning hold that Trump is considering canning Pam Bondi for her poor handling, if that's what she's doing, of the Epstein matter, which just won't go away.

The weird thing is that if you hang out with kiddy diddlers, brag about checking out teenage models at a pageant in the buff, talk about grabbing, well you know, people start to think you might be a kiddy diddler.

Weird, eh?

Anyhow, Trumps thinking of canning Bondi, and putting Lee Zeldin in her place. Zeldin is another Trump lawyer.  He's currently the head of the EPA.

If Bondi departs, she'll be the second major Trump admin sycophant to be canned, Noem being the first, so both cannings will have been of women.  A big difference, however, will be that Bondi is downright dangerous.  If Trump turns on Bondi, she'll turn on him.  Trump's advisors know that, but may be too afraid to tell him, and he's likely to dense to grasp that.

Noem, who turned out to be loathsome as the head of Homeland Security, won't be turning on Trump. . . yet. She's wait for him to be out of office, then she will.  But she's been back in the news due to her husband showing up in photos cross dressing and wearing big fake boobs.

Frankly, Noem, and her husband are to be pitied for this, not condemned.  But it does raise the interesting topic of hypocrisy in the Trump Administration.  The administration is thick with Christian Nationalism and "conservative values", but Noem was widely rumored to he engaged in an extramarital affair with another Trump official, even carting him around on expensive junkets. and now it turns out that her husband had what I'd regard as a sexually centered mental illness, one which he apparently didn't adequately attempt to conceal, and perhaps didn't attempt to conceal at all.  Trump himself is a serial polygamist and there are at least credible indicators that he may have fished in the shallow end of the pond, if not worse.  Bondi didn't acknowledged abused women after ranting at Congress.  Miller sounds like Himmler most of the time he speaks but is Jewish.

Perhaps we shouldn't be all that surprised.  The Nazis were sort of the same way.  There were affairs and of course one legendary homosexual scandal. 

Sin makes you stupid, as Jimmy Akin warns us.

Since the war with Iran started J. D. Vance has been hard to find  He's not out cheerleading the war like the nervous sounding Bessant or the administration like the "I took my family to Epstein Island but all I got was this T-shirt and I know absolutely nothing" Lutnick.  Vance is widely believed to have leaked his opposition to the war right as it started.

Another nearly silent, but not quite silent, Administration figure is Marco Rubio, who may be the one administration figure who doesn't do the "Oh Donald, may I kiss your ass" routing at cabinet meetings.  He hasn't been able to completely avoid the topic, but he's been pretty quiet  Indeed, Rubio tends to be remarkably quiet and when he shows up he tends to look really uncomfortable.   There's reason to believe that Rubio is the main backer on the administration's near invasion of Cuba and now that Trump is looking like a military dumbass, there's a real chance that Trump's ardor for military adventure may be over  For that matter, while the current military has been very damaged by Trump, there are likely still enough real officers in the military to protest against start  ing a second war when the current one isn't finished, and it's going to be at least a year, if not years, before that occurs.  Marco may have lost his campaign slogan for 2028 of Viva Cuba Libre "I did that".  

Rubio and Vance are somewhat unique in the Trump orbit as they're both real Catholics.  Press Secretary Leavitt is apparently as well, although it sure doesn't show as she's a full time liar.  

Rubio, when he speaks, tends to be pretending to be angry while saying Trump didn't say what he said, but what I'm going to say, even though Trump didn't say that camp.  

Vance has come out with a book on his conversation to Catholicism which is a big off ramp from the Trump Administration and its Paul Whites and Franklin Grahams.  It's a pretty clear signal that he's separating himself from the Evangelical far right fanatics and is beginning the process of separating himself from Trump.  The book is likely to draw criticism but it's a really smart move, as he's essentially getting up from the Paul White Bee Dance table and walking over to the adults and sitting down with the sane and sober.  He's going for the National Review/First Things crowd, not the NASCAR Country Pop gang.  By the time 2028 rolls around, the folks who were admiring Franklin Graham's letters to Trump will have forgotten all about them, for the most, part, with some being on to new wives and affairs but assured that as they were once saved, they'll aways be.

Rubio likely knows this is what Vance is doing and he's going to have to do something himself  What isn't clear  The value of being a failed President's Secretary of State hasn't really been there since Kissinger managed to find it had one.  Trump is looking worse as a President, indeed worse as a mammal, every day.  My guess is that if Trump isn't removed via the 25th Amendment, he'll find he forgot to let the cat out prior to November and will leave the administration.

When he leaves he can do what Bondi will do, if fired, and what Vance can't do, while Vice President, that being writing a tell all book.  Bondi's will be a bombshell, which is why Trump should not fire her if he's smart.  Bondi's "I Know Where all the Bodies are Buried and Who All the Teenage Concubines Were" tell all will be something else.  Rubio's "I Tried To Stop Trump From Being A Dumbass" book will be less salacious, but interesting  Vance won't have a chance to write something like that before 2028.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 121st Edition and Wars and Rumors of War, 2026. Part 3. The War against Iran Edition and other Military Topics.

Tuesday, December 2, 2025

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 110th Edition. Ballooning ballrooms and murder on the sea.

The Autocrat and the Architect.

Reports are leaking out that Trump's architect and Trump are now at odds over the ever expanding ballroom, with McCreey having told Trump that the building, which now will hold over 1,000 people, is getting too big and is going to engulf the White House itself.  McCreery is no longer taking a day to day role in the vandalization.

It frankly is looking more and more like this project will never get built.  Trump's dementia is racing through his cerebellum now and the clock on his illegitimate occupancy of the Presidency is likely winding down.

The ballroom, which nobody other than Trump wants, and has not been wanted for 150 years like Trump likes to claim, is a major focus for Trump.  He's desperately looking for a physical monument to himself.

Looking for somebody to blame for murder.

Over the last few days, since the Washington Post broke the news that survivors of the first illegal Venezuelan boat sinking were subsequently murdered on the water, the Trump administration has been bouncing off the walls to get ahead of the story.

On the Weekend shows, Noem slandered the newspaper, saying she wouldn't believe the story.  Since then it's gone from Hegseth ordered everyone killed, but that was before the first illegal act, and the Navy commander of the operation acted independently, apparently interpreting his orders in that fashion.

The irony is that, of course, the same group of people were having a fit about a collection of Senators who are veterans urging service members not to follow illegal orders.  Now it turns out that a major illegal order was just given.  In fact, the entire boat sinking campaign off of Venezuela is illegal, so the first strike was itself murder.  Killing the survivors is definitely illegal.

Gray complaining about Gordon.

Chuck Gray is complaining about the Governor not granting him extra money to publicize a moronic initiative to completely destroy the state's finances by cutting property taxes 50%.  

Gray will take off before the chickens ever come home to roost on this.  He's still aligned with the Freedom Caucus but it's pretty this legislative session, where they are going to loom large, is going to be their high water mark.  Gray wants to be governor, but he's not going to get that position.  I'd guess that Barlow will, although its quite early.  When that effort fails, Gray might take a run at the Senate, if he's still around, and then depart, or just depart.

Postscript:

The official position is that the Admiral in charge of the operation ordered the second strike, with Hegseth saying he had left by the time it occurred.  He also cited the fog of war as the reason for the killing, which would presuppose there being a war, which there isn't.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 109th Edition. Lost love. Painting Targets. Piggy. Articles of Surrender. Voting in opposition of something that isn't going on.

Thursday, July 10, 2025

Where's the outrage?

Kristi Noem didn’t approve FEMA rescue teams for over 72 hours after the Texas floods, following a rule she imposed that required her personal sign-off on any operation over $100,000.

Was there not a Barbie dress up outfit for the occasion?

This was pretty clearly going to cost over $100,000.

When Bush II was President, there was outrage that he didn't go to Louisiana to view hurricane damage immediately.

The very same thing was true when Obama was President.

Joe Biden took flack for not reacting to floods in South Carolina instantly.

Is anyone demanding that King Don put his golf shoes on the ground in Texas?

Not that I think it would do anything.  I always thought the outcry about a President not going to to a disaster was absurd.  Noem, however, deserves criticism here.

So, frankly, does the State of Texas, which falls into the "don't tax me" camp, and therefore has inadequate warning systems.

You do get what you pay for, and lack of payment can be tragically lethal.  That sort of tragedy is going to be increasing during the Trump era, and for quite some time thereafter.

For the meantime, MAGA's should be howling.  Shouldn't they expect the same level of direct involvement that Bush and Obama had?

And for Federal help. . . Wyoming delegation. . . what are you going to do to help us. . . it's fire season.