Politics Random, Random

[ti-amie]

#RandyResistING Authoritarianism
@RandyResist

“To prove to her mother-in-law that she had been swindled, a Florida woman said she drove her to a nearby bank and urged her to try to redeem the Trump Bucks in her possession.
“We thought she got it, she even admitted she got scammed,” the woman said. “But then giant boxes arrived at the house full of Trump checks and other stuff that she bought for $500 [from Trump] and that would supposedly be worth $6 million one day. We tell her she’s getting scammed and she says, ‘Just wait, Trump will make all the patriots rich.’”
“It’s like she’s in a cult,” the Florida woman said.
it’s a wise old saying, a Trump cultist and their money are soon parted.” Jeff Tiedrich

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GLsr05EWEAA ... me=900x900

[ponchi101]

"Like she is in a cult..."
Drop the "like".

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

More from the party of family values. That's him on the left.

[ti-amie]

Trump VP contender Kristi Noem writes of killing dog – and goat – in new book
South Dakota governor includes bloody tale in campaign volume – and admits ‘a better politician … wouldn’t tell the story here’

Martin Pengelly in Washington

In 1952, as a Republican candidate for vice-president, Richard Nixon stirred criticism by admitting receiving a dog, Checkers, as a political gift.

In 2012, as the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney was pilloried for tying a dog, Seamus, to the roof of the family car for a cross-country trip.

But in 2024 Kristi Noem, a strong contender to be named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has managed to go one further – by admitting killing a dog of her own.

“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” the South Dakota governor writes in a new book, adding that the dog, a female, had an “aggressive personality” and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.

What unfolds over the next few pages shows how that effort went very wrong indeed – and, remarkably, how Cricket was not the only domestic animal Noem chose to kill one day in hunting season.

Noem’s book – No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward – will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy.

Like other aspirants to be Trump’s second vice-president who have ventured into print, Noem offers readers a mixture of autobiography, policy prescriptions and political invective aimed at Democrats and other enemies, all of it raw material for speeches on the campaign stump.

She includes her story about the ill-fated Cricket, she says, to illustrate her willingness, in politics as well as in South Dakota life, to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it simply needs to be done.

By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”.

Noem describes calling Cricket, then using an electronic collar to attempt to bring her under control. Nothing worked. Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another”.

Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like “a trained assassin”.

When Noem finally grabbed Cricket, she says, the dog “whipped around to bite me”. Then, as the chickens’ owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologised, wrote the shocked family a check “for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime”.

Through it all, Noem says, Cricket was “the picture of pure joy”.

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.

“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”

Noem, who also represented her state in Congress for eight years, got her gun, then led Cricket to a gravel pit.

“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realised another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

Incredibly, Noem’s tale of slaughter is not finished.

Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that was “nasty and mean”, because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.

Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she “dragged him to a gravel pit”, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down”.

At that point, Noem writes, she realised a construction crew had watched her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Noem’s children.

“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes of her daughter, who asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”

On Friday, reaction to news of Noem’s description of killing her dog and her goat included satire, the Barack Obama adviser turned podcaster Tommy Vietor calling the governor “Jeffrey Dahmer with veneers”, a reference to a famous serial killer and a recent scandal over Noem’s cosmetic dentistry treatment.

But most responses, particularly from dog lovers and people who hunt with dogs, simply expressed disgust.

Rick Wilson, of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, called Noem “deliberately cruel” and “trash”. Ryan Busse, the Democratic candidate for governor of Montana, said: “Anyone who has ever owned a birddog knows how disgusting, lazy and evil this is. Damn.”

Noem herself posted a screengrab of the Guardian report – and an admission that she recently “put down three horses”.

“We love animals,” she said, “but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down three horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.”

The governor also said her book contained “more real, honest and politically incorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping”.

In the book, however, she sums up her story about Cricket the dog and the unnamed, un-castrated goat with what may prove a contender for the greatest understatement of election year: “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.”

https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2024/ ... -goat-book

[ti-amie]

[Owendonovan]

Trump VP contender Kristi Noem writes of killing dog – and goat – in new book
South Dakota governor includes bloody tale in campaign volume – and admits ‘a better politician … wouldn’t tell the story here’

Martin Pengelly in Washington

In 1952, as a Republican candidate for vice-president, Richard Nixon stirred criticism by admitting receiving a dog, Checkers, as a political gift.

In 2012, as the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney was pilloried for tying a dog, Seamus, to the roof of the family car for a cross-country trip.

But in 2024 Kristi Noem, a strong contender to be named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has managed to go one further – by admitting killing a dog of her own.

“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” the South Dakota governor writes in a new book, adding that the dog, a female, had an “aggressive personality” and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.

What unfolds over the next few pages shows how that effort went very wrong indeed – and, remarkably, how Cricket was not the only domestic animal Noem chose to kill one day in hunting season.

Noem’s book – No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward – will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy.

Like other aspirants to be Trump’s second vice-president who have ventured into print, Noem offers readers a mixture of autobiography, policy prescriptions and political invective aimed at Democrats and other enemies, all of it raw material for speeches on the campaign stump.

She includes her story about the ill-fated Cricket, she says, to illustrate her willingness, in politics as well as in South Dakota life, to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it simply needs to be done.

By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”.

Noem describes calling Cricket, then using an electronic collar to attempt to bring her under control. Nothing worked. Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another”.

Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like “a trained assassin”.

When Noem finally grabbed Cricket, she says, the dog “whipped around to bite me”. Then, as the chickens’ owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologised, wrote the shocked family a check “for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime”.

Through it all, Noem says, Cricket was “the picture of pure joy”.

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.

“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”

Noem, who also represented her state in Congress for eight years, got her gun, then led Cricket to a gravel pit.

“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realised another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

Incredibly, Noem’s tale of slaughter is not finished.

Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that was “nasty and mean”, because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.

Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she “dragged him to a gravel pit”, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down”.

At that point, Noem writes, she realised a construction crew had watched her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Noem’s children.

“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes of her daughter, who asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”

On Friday, reaction to news of Noem’s description of killing her dog and her goat included satire, the Barack Obama adviser turned podcaster Tommy Vietor calling the governor “Jeffrey Dahmer with veneers”, a reference to a famous serial killer and a recent scandal over Noem’s cosmetic dentistry treatment.

But most responses, particularly from dog lovers and people who hunt with dogs, simply expressed disgust.

Rick Wilson, of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, called Noem “deliberately cruel” and “trash”. Ryan Busse, the Democratic candidate for governor of Montana, said: “Anyone who has ever owned a birddog knows how disgusting, lazy and evil this is. Damn.”

Noem herself posted a screengrab of the Guardian report – and an admission that she recently “put down three horses”.

“We love animals,” she said, “but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down three horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.”

The governor also said her book contained “more real, honest and politically incorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping”.

In the book, however, she sums up her story about Cricket the dog and the unnamed, un-castrated goat with what may prove a contender for the greatest understatement of election year: “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.”

https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2024/ ... -goat-book

This is not something I would be relishing in. This is something I would keep deeply secret. I'm not exactly sure how she wants to be perceived for these actions, because nothing good comes to mind.

[skatingfan]

This is not something I would be relishing in. This is something I would keep deeply secret. I'm not exactly sure how she wants to be perceived for these actions, because nothing good comes to mind.

But to MAGA cruelty is the point.

[ti-amie]

And this is why they hate Nancy Pelosi

[ti-amie]

[ashkor87]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... mmigration
Someone should ask him if it would be ok for Biden to order that Trump be assassinated! The immunity wouldn't apply only to Trump, after all..

[ti-amie]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... mmigration
Someone should ask him if it would be ok for Biden to order that Trump be assassinated! The immunity wouldn't apply only to Trump, after all..

You want the current version of US msm to grow spines and ask logical follow up questions?

Silly wabbit.

[ti-amie]

So here's a US MSM person asking questions. Beware of the gaslighting that ensued.

[ti-amie]

Victoria Brownworth
@VABVOX
I told you Trump was never going to Barron's graduation and the MAGAs told me I was slandering Trump. Nah, I just know from years of reporting on him that he puts himself first. He's never prioritized that kid once. He was screwing other women while Melania was recovering from childbirth. Gross. https://twitter.com/i/trending/1787657116037349582

[ti-amie]

RFK Jr. says he had parasitic brain worm and undisclosed memory loss
Kennedy’s campaign spokeswoman said he contracted a parasite years ago while traveling “extensively in Africa, South America and Asia in his work as an environmental advocate.”

By Meryl Kornfield
Updated May 8, 2024 at 2:14 p.m. EDT|Published May 8, 2024 at 12:10 p.m. EDT

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate who has marketed himself to voters as a younger, healthier alternative to the two major contenders, contracted a parasitic worm that got into his brain years ago and ate a portion of it before dying, his campaign said Wednesday.

The 70-year-old scion of the powerful political family revealed in a 2012 deposition during divorce proceedings from his second wife, which the New York Times obtained and first reported Wednesday, that he had short- and long-term memory loss and described himself as having “cognitive problems, clearly.” Around the time of the discovery of the parasite, Kennedy was also diagnosed with mercury poisoning that he attributed to his diet, he said in the deposition, a condition that can also cause memory loss. Kennedy told the Times that he has since recovered from his fogginess.

When asked about the incident, Kennedy campaign spokeswoman Stefanie Spear told The Washington Post that Kennedy contracted a parasite while traveling “extensively in Africa, South America and Asia in his work as an environmental advocate.”

“The issue was resolved more than 10 years ago, and he is in robust physical and mental health,” she said in a written statement. “Questioning Mr. Kennedy’s health is a hilarious suggestion, given his competition.”

Kennedy disclosed in the deposition that consulted with neurologists in 2010 when a friend voiced concerns about his memory loss, according to the Times. He said he was told that a dark spot discovered in his brain scans could be a tumor, a year after his uncle, longtime Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) died of brain cancer. The Post has not independently reviewed the deposition.

But a doctor at New York-Presbyterian Hospital told him the spot could be caused by “a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” he said in the deposition, according to the Times.

Around the same time, doctors also diagnosed Kennedy with mercury poisoning, which he said was caused by eating a large amount of fish that contained the dangerous heavy metal. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has spoken out against mercury and other toxins contaminating food, told the Times that he was eating a diet heavy in tuna and perch at the time.

He told the Times he has since reduced his fish intake and underwent chelation therapy, a treatment to expel metals from the body. He said the parasite in his brain required no treatment.

Kennedy has focused much of his campaign on advocating for regulations on major industries that he says have contributed to the country’s worsening health problems. He also has spread misinformation about vaccines and argued against public health measures enacted during the coronavirus pandemic.

Since he announced he would run for president in April last year, Kennedy has not disclosed his medical records.

Former president Donald Trump and President Biden, who have attempted to quell voters’ concerns about their advanced ages, have released limited health summaries. Biden’s doctor released a six-page summary of medical tests in February, declaring him “fit for duty,” while Trump shared a one-page letter in November from a doctor who belongs to his golf club and said he was in “excellent health.” But the disclosures break from a tradition of presidential candidates previously releasing more complete reports on their health.

Kennedy has previously disclosed other health issues. He has said his strained, sometimes hoarse voice is caused by spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder that causes involuntary spasms in the muscles of the voice box. He also has told others he became infected with hepatitis C, which was treated, from intravenous drug use in his youth.

In 2001, Kennedy was hospitalized for an irregular heartbeat caused by a common heart abnormality that can cause strokes, according to news reports at the time. Kennedy said in the 2012 deposition he was hospitalized three other times for that condition, which he told the Times has not caused any other incidents in a decade.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... rm-health/