Ted Cruz: A Liar in Winter

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

     TrusTED - Ted Cruz campaign slogan, "trust" in the past tense.

     It could plausibly be said even by those who aren't Bernie or Hillary or Trump mavens that virtually the only particle of honesty that has ever come out of the Cruz campaign was when he tried to kiss his five year-old daughter (the one he frankly admitted early last month to spanking for lying) and she recoiled in disgust. Ever the political calculator, Tailgunner Ted immediately handed off the troublesome offspring after glancing to see if the camera had caught the painfully awkward moment like a pedophile caught tonguing a first cousin at a Mississippi family reunion. (It had.)
     It has been a weird, surreal winter for the junior and first term senator from Texas. It is one that has seen him vault from obscurity into a virtual tie for Chief Trump ankle biter with fellow first term senator Marco Rubio (R-Cyberdyne). But it's a reality in politics that with increased visibility comes increased scrutiny (as if there's any difference).
     And with his improbable elevation in the polls since the Iowa Caucus that he'd won by default when Trump left the state before the caucus and refused to take part in the GOP debate the night before, Cruz is under even more scrutiny than when he held his fake Dr. Seuss filibuster that essentially shut down the government. And his credibility has taken a beating not so much at the hands of Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. All they have to do is stand by with arms akimbo and virtual halos over their heads and let Trump do his trademark bullying bellowing.
     And it's hard if not outright impossible to find fault with what the Hair Apparent is saying about someone who is now his biggest GOP rival. Ted Cruz is running a blatantly dishonest campaign. Of course, this is virtually synonymous with Republican campaigns in particular and all of them in general as campaigns are just ruthlessly crafted and projected propaganda. What's staggering is that Cruz has been caught in so many blatant lies in such a relatively short period of time.
     It's difficult to catalog all the lies that Cruz has been caught in. But with the cravenness of your typical self-serving politician, it's notable that Cruz has never once accepted responsibility for a single one of those lies. It's always the dog's fart. This came to a head a few days ago when Cruz essentially fired his Communications Director Rick Tyler for a campaign spot that purported to show Marco Rubio dissing the Bible by saying it didn't contain any answers (In fact, the Florida senator had said to a Cruz campaign staffer that the Bible "had all the answers."). Of course, it didn't help when Cruz, as in many official campaign spots, used the tried-and-true rubber stamp, "I'm Ted Cruz and I approve this message."

     Of course there's not one answer in the Bible to explain why Ted Cruz is even still in this race or how he can articulate a message that will resonate with the conservative electorate, especially now that at least 10 Republicans have dropped out or suspended their presidential campaigns (the latest being Jeb!, who will perhaps toddle off to fix something else, like the World Trade Center or NOLA's levees).

     This naturally teases another question, one the corporate mainstream media gets the dry heaves at the thought of asking Cruz: Even if he was dedicated to running a clean, positive campaign while his underlings nonetheless are hamstringing him on literally a weekly basis, if he can't control a few key staffers during a campaign that at least doesn't threaten to touch off WW III or plunge world markets into the Dark Ages, how can a President Cruz be trusted to keep a watchful eye over his subordinates in the West Wing? After all, the Bush administration was rife with power-mad psychopaths and clueless incompetents pursuing their own agendas scurrying behind the Idiot Son's back while he choked on pretzels, starting with Dick "Bunker" Cheney. And look how well that worked out (See trade center, World and Orleans, New, Katrina).

I Approved That Message Before I Disapproved It

     Still, Cruz can't completely blame his staffers for every lie. No one told him to lie about getting his health care cut off because of ObamaCare. And how can Cruz say with a straight face that he couldn't tell the difference between Ben Carson briefly going home and suspending his own campaign (that he pathetically tried to pin on CNN)?

     Essentially Ted Cruz can be described as someone who's even creepier than the sinister-looking Richard Nixon without any of the political adroitness. One of Ben Carson's colleagues, a respected neurologist, recently published a paper on how it's difficult to look at Cruz's "creepy, unsettling face." His own college chums are terrified at the thought of him becoming president. He is reviled, at best ignored, by the GOP establishment to the point of him still, Trump rightly said, not securing one endorsement from his fellow Republican senators. 

     If you want to know how much in the cold Ted Cruz is, even his BFF Mike Lee of Utah has essentially endorsed Marco Rubio while simultaneously campaigning with Cruz. To add insult to injury, Rubio's been picking up endorsements like a sailor picks up STDs on liberty (such as from Viagra pitchman Bob Dole in a desperate attempt to help Rubio with his electile dysfunction problem). And lastly, as with the establishment GOP, Cruz is leaving anti-establishment teabaggers who've long since sworn fealty to Trump utterly cold.

    So why is Ted Cruz steadily rising in the polls (with an albeit tainted Iowa Caucus win)? Or has he plateaued and is doomed to finish as a semi-respectable also-ran by the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this July? It seems the latter may be the case in light of Cruz's dismal third place finish in last night's Nevada Caucus.
     Perhaps in the long run, Cruz's little bump in the polls was the political equivalent of the Yankees taking the first three games from the Red Sox in the 2004 ALCS: After the first three caucuses/primaries, it's all downhill. If the overwhelming voice of the 75,000 Republican caucus-goers who came out last night to vote is any indication, perhaps Cruz will be relegated to the ash heap of this election cycle as surely as Ben Carson will be.
    And the stench of dishonesty is sinking Cruz in a profession where corruption and dishonesty is considered a time-honored part of the game. The blatant pandering and flipflopping sank Mitt Romney four years ago (and he won Nevada's caucus big in 2012, although just 34,000 showed up to vote that year) and the Cruz campaign has been so glaringly disingenuous even conservative voters are beginning to notice and are turned off by it.
     Perhaps Cruz is the one who should get spanked for lying and it seems Donald Trump was the one who did it last night. As a parting gesture, perhaps Senator Seuss should change his campaign slogan from TrusTED to BusTED.

Why is Donald Trump So Popular With the Right Wing?

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

     It's a question eminently worthy to be included with other great queries of the ages such as Who Was Jack the Ripper, Why Do Dogs Sniff Each Other's Butts and Why Won't Soccer and the Metric System Take Hold in the US? To anyone who doesn't watch NASCAR and Fox "News", it's all supposition. It's like trying to get in the mind of a cat to determine why it shits behind your couch when it has a clean litter box to use.

     And the Donald's improbable and seemingly inexplicable appeal to the right wing denizens living at the base of Jon Stewart's Bullshit Mountain has proven to be an enduring mystery since Trump announced his candidacy from his own hotel back in June. After all, what's Trump saying this year that he hadn't back when he was just an umber-faced buffoonish alsoran in 2012? That campaign was immediately exposed for the right wing performance art that it was and before anyone knew it, Trump decided to terminate his campaign and sulk back to Celebrity Apprentice.

     So what's so different with the current goat rodeo? Since 2012, the only ways that Trump's changed is he's gained a few more pounds and his increasingly transparent double weave is the worse for wear. He's changed remarkably little since a suppressed 1989 documentary was made about him when he was still in his 30's.

     Well, this time around, he's attacking minorities and women with renewed vigor, even right wing Fox icon Megyn Kelly, and is more than a little more brash than he was in '12. And considering the hostile climate Republicans have made since that year for women, minorities and other tried-and-true targets of the right wing, this has emboldened the Neanderthal wing of the GOP so their completely batshit insane positions have the illusion of being mainstream or on the verge of being so (Thank you again, Joe Overton).

     Humans never change no matter how long our shit- and blood-spattered lineage stretches. One of those ways is in whom we tend to surrender ourselves whether it be favorite writers, spouses and soulmates and politicians. It's a foregone conclusion that many humans seek out those who have commonalities with us. Whether it be someone who looks like us, thinks like us or has common values with us, as a generally egoistic species, we tend to be attracted to those in whom we see the most of ourselves. 

     And, if one is tactless and hateful and virulently defensive to those who don't share your views, you'll tend to be attracted to someone like Trump (although it could be said distance, like absence, makes the heart grow fonder). Indeed, Donald Trump's entire candidacy can be boiled down to the word "Mexicans" and a derogatory imperative.

     While being canny and devious to make himself a multi billionaire through one tax avoidance scheme after another, Donald Trump is not an intelligent man. He comes across as a thug that just made his first million, as someone who'd hijacked third base at gunpoint and thought he was born on it. The radical Teabagger faction that is not only indistinguishable from white supremacist factions but are the one and the same see their rancid values shared or pretended to be shared by a huckster who's barely smart enough and more than cynical enough to see the profit in doing so.

Not Racist But #1 With Racists

     Right wing mouth-breathers who scream about government overreach and the elites have always had an uneasy alliance with the 1% who still successfully pull the football from them like so many Lucy Van Pelts every election cycle. They get the vague sense they're being butt-fucked from behind but as long as the GOP and Wall Street keep telling them the liberals are out to get their guns, every time they look in the mirror to see who's sodomizing them, all they'll see is Michael Moore and George Soros.

     So how cool is it when, instead of buying a candidate, someone in the 1% decides to run for President and it happens to be someone who shares their values? 

     Guns are cool! We shouldn't have gun free zones! We should just bomb the shit out of this nation or another! I'd get rid of inner city gangs in a New York minute! I'd build a wall around Mexico who imports their rapists to our country! Menstrual blood squirting out everywhere! Sure I read the Bible. It's my favorite book! I'd fuck her if she wasn't my daughter. Deport all 11,000,000 of them!

     20 years ago or less, such a candidacy would've been seen only in a political satire courtesy of Hollywood and dismissed, as was Trump's last stumping stunt, as pure right wing performance art. But as I said earlier, the GOP establishment that's popping Advil like beer nuts over Trump's antics has only itself to blame because they got into bed with the Teabaggers who then elected their own ideological soulmates into Congress by the dozens, setting the stage for a rancidly recidivist nation that seems bound and determined to catapult us back to beyond the beginning of the Civil Rights and Suffrage movements and clear into the 19th century.

     As stated, it's inexplicable how anyone could so fanatically support such a thoroughly revolting carbon-based life form such as Donald Trump. But it's notable that among those who support Trump the most vocally are some of the stupidest, most misinformed voters and most virulent racists in the US. If you don't believe me, just consider for a minute that disgraced racist Hulk Hogan publicly stated he wanted to be Trump's running mate.

     So it's refreshing for the right wing to get behind a One Percenter who seems to share their values and avoids looking like an elitist without ever being burdened by the suspicion that he's merely cynically using their prejudices and fears to political advantage. It's enough that he's not too self-conscious to step into a WWE ring and make a flaming asshole of himself or to trash talk anyone of consequence who even mildly questions his vague and substanceless positions.

     And the more companies and other corporate entities that dump Trump, the more he gets to play the victim card, to a "persecuted" white right wing base that sees white people, gun owners and Christians like Kim Davis as under attack? That only adds to the appeal.