Believe me, you’re going to get sick of Trump’s nominees pretty quickly, if you’re not already.
And you know you don’t even get to relax when he’d done picking people, because then we’re going to have the big old fight over whether or not they are subject to background checks.
Then we get to watch the confirmation hearings and all that good stuff…
You guys know how this game goes.
Hey, at least you have me to make fun of the stupid people and jerks along the way, right? I feel like my articles for this storied archive of political chicanery and theater here at Political Flare has become a bit of a column, maybe.
I don’t know how my publisher feels about that yet, but she hasn’t stopped me from speaking my mind so far.
And I really dig this whole conversational feel, honestly.
So let’s talk about Pam Bondi.
I personally feel like there’s a relatively short checklist of things that should probably preclude someone from getting a job in government.
I think we can all agree that the list went out the window even before the 2024 campaign, when approximately zero percent of the media at any point questioned why a convicted felon is even allowed to run for president, but that’s another conversation.
The checklist might still exist, and I feel like it should be easy to avoid running afoul of the list:
× Don’t diddle any kids
× Try not to crime too much
× Maybe stop after three spouses
× No showing up drunk at work
Must love dogs, but not enough to steal one
Pam, you were SO CLOSE.
If only you hadn’t stolen that St.
Bernard after Hurricane Katrina and then tortured the rightful owners for years with legal efforts to keep their dog from them!
Back when Katrina hit, Louisiana couple Steve and Dorreen Couture put their lovable dog Tank in an animal shelter while they sought shelter themselves to ride out the storm.
Thousands of people were separated from their pets, and only the most responsible of owners took the time to find animal accommodations while they were likely headed to someplace meant for people only.
That’s already got me on the Coutures’ side.
But the severity of the storm caused the shelter — no longer being in contact with the Coutures — to surrender Tank to the Pinellas Humane Society in nearby Florida, less than 10 hours away.
It was outstanding that the shelter had been able to quickly assure the dog’s safety, but because they didn’t have contact with the Coutures, Tank went up for adoption.
Enter Pam Bondi.
At first, it really was a labor of love for her, it seems.
During her time as Attorney General of Florida, Bondi had been an outspoken animal rights activist.
She would often bring rescue dogs in cute little bow ties to cabinet meetings.
But when the Coutures tracked Tank down in 2006 to Florida and Bondi, she had already renamed him Noah and decided that he was HER rescue.
Even here, I’m still not that mad at Pam — that dog was at the Humane Society, and lord knows what kind of information the original shelter had been able to convey about Tank.
Simple enough, though, right? They just explain the situation, repay any fees she might have paid for their dog, and take Tank home.
But Pam wouldn’t have it.
She claimed that these people she’d just met had neglected the big fuzzbucket, since he had a case of heartworms when she adopted him.
“He was dying from heartworms.
They had filled his heart,” she said to the St.
Petersburg Times. “I took a dog who was a walking skeleton.
That’s what was wrong with him before the hurricane.”
Wait, so she DID have information on him from the original shelter? She had to have been expecting the Coutures to find the dog eventually.
But she took the fight another way: She accused them of being bad pet parents.
“If I thought I was sending him to a stable environment, where he would be cared for, as hard as it would be, I’d put him in my car and drive him back myself,” she said.
The Coutures denied any such allegations and said that Tank had been the victim of a longterm medical condition.
Heartworms, after all, come back very easily even after successful treatment with melarsomine or the GOP’s favorite drug, ivermectin.
Dogs who have ever had heartworms are recommended to be tested every six months.
You’ll be happy to find out that the Coutures ended up with the dog.
But not before Bondi dragged them back and forth to court for just under a year and a half, before they finally settled.
And if that last phrase doesn’t trigger your logic factory, let’s put it plainly: You don’t settle a case like this and give the dog back unless it ended up being the Coutures compensating Bondi for expenses and then taking their dog home, like Bondi could have let them do all the way back in the middle of this article.
Lawyer to the core, Pam wanted that dog for herself and used all her legal prowess and experience in animal activism to try and keep another family’s dog.
The fact that they got the dog back in spite of Bondi’s advantage means that somebody knew who the rightful owners should be.
Maybe it was Tank.