Noem Either Nailed the VP Spot Or Signed Her Political Death Warrant

We’ve said over and over there is no low they won’t go. Both Donald Trump and MAGA have dragged the political discourse in this country down several stories. If America was a skyscraper and politics was an elevator, we’ve already gone past the bargain basement and several sub-basements and only Hell itself would seem to be uncharted territory. And along comes the governor of South Dakota to give us a tour to Hell itself. Noem has written a book and one of the stories in that book is how she “hated” a goat and a dog, found them both “worthless” and “untrainable” and so what do you do with worthless beings that don’t do your bidding? Why, grab a gun and blow them to kingdom come, that’s what you do.

If this was oppo research it would be deadly. The fact that Noem actually did this and then wrote about it speaks volumes about who this woman is and I’ll distill that to two words, take your pick: “Monster” or “Sociopath.” Or both. And yes, it gets worse. The Republican National Committee is fundraising off of this because who doesn’t want an autographed copy of a book written by somebody who kills animals in cold blood because they don’t suit her style? Charlie Manson’s on the other side of the grass, so Donald Trump can’t consider him for the VP slot, but not to worry, he’s got Kristi Noem.

The National Republican Congressional Committee Friday sent out an email alert hawking signed copies of South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s forthcoming memoir, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward.”

“I’ve reached out a few times offering you a signed copy of my new memoir No Going Back, and now there’s fewer than 73 signed copies left!” the email declares.

“And with such low stock remaining, I can only keep your signed copy on hold for the next 60 minutes before I must offer it to someone else.”

Readers are told they must act now to read the “uncensored story of the chaos in Washington D.C.” because “these books are flying off the shelves.”

“So read for yourself,” Noem writes, “how the lessons I’ve learned over the years are key to solving this nation’s ills, and claim your signed copy before we run out for good!”

As stunned readers learned Friday, the book also includes one dark lesson about what to do with poorly behaved pets such as 14-month-old Cricket.

“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote. “[She was] dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”

Noem explained Cricket escaped an electric dog collar to attack a local family’s chickens and, later, bit the Republican governor with a look “pure joy” on her face.

Dogs are judges of character. They do know. Now before we go into Noem’s character to judge ourselves, not all dogs are cut out to be hunting dogs. That may have been where Noem made her mistake. Long story short, I used to own a horse, an Arabian gelding named Scotty. One day a horse deemed “unrideable” was brought to the ranch. Scotty and this horse made friends, because horses do that. Different animal personalities are attracted to one another just like different human personalities are attracted to one another, and so I got to know the horse. And this horse knew I was Scotty’s person. They know things like that. And I fed her carrots and apples and she was a sweet, joyful thing.

She was “unrideable” because some idiot had decided that she should be a “cutting horse” which is a horse that is used to herd and direct other animals, cows, sheep, etc. I can only imagine the fear and abuse that the poor thing endured in her life. I said that she should be a pleasure horse. It was obvious from the animal’s personality that she was not cut out to be a cutting horse — just like not all dogs are cut out to be herd dogs, either. I even thought she might be good with children, as my horse, Scotty, was. He was a lesson horse and he was great with kids. He was great with one 47-year-old kid in particular, me, who had never been afforded the opportunity to ride horses as a child but had that goal as a lifelong ambition.

Scotty was a great horse. I had magical times with him. I am so glad that I got to ride a horse while on this earth. I’m not able to ride now because I have a titanium hip and can’t risk a fall, but I cherish the times I was astride Scotty.  I believe this other horse would have been the same kind of horse and had the same kind of relationship with people. Now I’m going to get to the point I’m making: whomever made the decision to turn the horse we’re talking about into a cutting horse knew nothing about horses. And Kristi Noem, by extension, knows nothing about dogs. You can’t just take a dog, any dog, and decide that dog should be utilized for said purpose. You need to get to know a dog and *decide* if that particular dog can be trained for a certain task.

That requires knowledge of dogs and judgement. And Kristi Noem clearly has neither. The dog that she decided was “worthless” and destroyed with a shotgun shell was not worthless. Not one bit. The dog was being miscast in a role it wasn’t suited for. Think of Al Pacino playing Andre the Giant, or Arnold Schwarzenegger playing Little Lord Fauntleroy. Not every single dog is raw material for any conceivable job anymore than any actor is raw material for any role. You need to suit the actor or dog with the task at hand.

There are no bad dogs, only bad dog owners.

“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?”

And it keeps getting worse. After the article you just read excerpts from was published she posted this.

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.”

I don’t even want to think what the issue with the horses was. Getting back to my horse, Scotty, he got a lame leg and he couldn’t be ridden anymore. I quitclaimed him to the ranch with the proviso that only children could ride him and they couldn’t weigh more than 75 pounds. That was the best I could do for my equine friend, to keep him from being in pain and to keep myself from the futility of more shots from the veterinarian and/or an operation which wouldn’t have necessarily helped him and which I couldn’t afford in the first place.

Animal lovers find a way. Our four legged friends can’t speak to us in language but they can tell us enough about who they are and what they’re experiencing to where we can all, collectively, made a decision which is best for them and that we, as decent people, can live with.

Kristi Noem is not a decent person. She’s a cold-hearted, pompous, out of touch, ass. And she’s getting heat from the right-wing crazies she needs to be successful. Whoa, lookey here.

“You do not shoot an animal just because it doesn’t ‘hunt right,'” said Laura Loomer, a far-right activist and former congressional candidate. “You find a no kill shelter and give the dog up for adoption and give it to a family that doesn’t have a farm. I adopted a dog from a Chinese meat market. I love her. My Mecca was abused in the meat market and has potty training issues in adulthood. I have to clean up after her a lot because she sometimes forgets she can’t pee in the house. It’s annoying but I love her so I take care of her and her special needs … There is no excuse to kill a dog because it attacked some chickens.” In a separate post, she said, “She can’t be VP now. You can’t shoot your dog and then be VP.”

“I’m a dog lover and I am honestly horrified by the Kristi Noem excerpt,” wrote former Trump communications official Alyssa Farah Griffin. “I wish I hadn’t even read it. A 14-month old dog is still a puppy & can be trained. A large part of bad behavior in dogs is not having proper training from the humans responsible for them.” She separately added, “Dogs are a gift from God. They’re a reflection of his unconditional love. Anyone who would needlessly hurt an animal because they are inconvenient needs help.”

“When I saw tweets about Kristi Noem murdering her puppy, I thought to myself, ‘Damn, one of the other VP contenders’ teams found some oppo,’ until I realized SHE wrote about it in HER book,” wrote former Trump White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews. “I’m not sure why anyone would brag about this unless they’re sick and twisted.”

“Kristi Noem is trash. Decades with hunting- and bird-dogs, and the number I’ve killed because they were chicken-sharp or had too much prey drive is ZERO. Puppies need slow exposure to birds, and bird-scent,” wrote Rick Wilson, a longtime GOP strategist who now runs the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “Not every dog is for the field, but 99.9% of them are trainable or re-homeable … You down old dogs, hurt dogs, and sick dogs humanely, not by shooting them and tossing them in a gravel pit.”

“I assumed the story was fake. My goodness,” wrote far-right provocateur and former “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich. “At least she’s out for VP.”

Noem totally botched this. Her intention was to tell a tale of rawboned farmers who make tough decisions. All she’s done is tell a tale of an idiot who knows nothing about animals butchering them needlessly. All she’s done is display her ignorance and her lack of judgement. Paradoxically, she’s done us all a great favor. If Trump picks her as a VP now, he’s truly out of his mind. I don’t think that he will. I think she just executed her vice presidential campaign like she executed those poor, blameless animals.