Category Archives: Politics

Like everyone else, I was surprised by the news that South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem boasts in her forthcoming autobiography about shooting Cricket, her 14-months-old wirehair pointer, due to Cricket’s “aggressive personality”.  Political commentators seem to think that she did this to show her toughness, with a particular eye, perhaps, to signalling to Donald Trump that she’d be a fine Vice Presidential candidate.

What surprised me more than the cruelty of the act — we’re talking about a modern Republican Governor after all — was that Noem seemed ignorant of the role of dogs in modern politics. Mitt Romney got pilloried for tying a dog on his car roof.  Dr. Memhet Oz might be a Senator from Pennsylvania but for this video about his actually killing puppies:

And as I’ve noted before, in a 2008 Maryland Senate ad in the (ultimately losing) candidate tried to make fun of attack ads against him by invoking his love for … puppies.

It worked, though, for Senator Raphael Warnock,

…and it wasn’t even his dog.

Meanwhile, it turns out that shooting your dog might also be a class two misdemeanor in South Dakota.

In any case, what sort of politician thinks that the W.C. Fields crowd is a demographic worth pursuing?

And I think it probably will be Sen. Tim Scott, anyway.

I thought the Lincoln Project kinda lost its mojo after the 2020 election, and the major staff changes.  But this under-2-minute montage of all the highlights from the weekend is vintage stuff.

Now if only they’d post their latest videos on their website instead of ex-Twitter.

It’s an old truism that not only do people resemble their pets but Dogs and Their Owners Share Similar Personality Traits.

Reading the news that President Biden’s dog, Commander, bit Secret Service agents at least 24 times before being exiled from the White House made me wonder in what way the President might be likely to demonstrate aggressive behavior.

And here it is: Biden instructed aides to dial up attacks on Trump’s wild comments and Biden embraces bully pulpit as he escalates fight against Trump and GOP over Russia.  Expect more.

Although in past years handicapping the Veepstakes has been one of my favorite pastimes, I find that this year I don’t much care who Trump’s running mate might turn out to be. I suppose it’s because they vary from quite bad to horrible, or because I think that, barring one of the candidates having a medical crisis, the election will be decided either in court or via Trump’s self-destruction as he says increasingly bizarre things and people start to focus on them.

But that doesn’t stop other people, and Trump added fuel to the flames today by naming six people he thought might be potential running mates. The list included Sen. Tim Scott, who seems like the obvious choice to me, as it offers the tantalizing prospect of peeling off just enough Black votes to move a few swing states.

More bizarrely the list also included Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. That’s bizarre not only because Trump spent so much time belittling him, but because they’re both residents of the State of Florida, and the US Constitution prohibits electors from a state from choosing both a president and a vice president from that same state. (Art II, Cl. 3: “The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves”.) Weirdly, nobody writing about Trump’s statement seems to be mentioning this. But then I think the entire press has pretty much given up on fact checking him anyway.

DeSantis, who attended Harvard Law School and presumably knows much more about the Constitution than Trump does — although probably that’s true of almost everyone — was quick to say he would never be Trump’s Vice President. He made it sound as if this was something of a principled choice, but I think he just knows it could never be, as the risk of a squeaker in which Vice President Harris is reelected when you don’t count Florida’s electoral votes is just too great.