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If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

We still have time to mess this up!

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If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

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The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

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You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / Cruz-ifiction / Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

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barry cruzwater morin

(Jim Morin via GoComics.com)
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In you guts, you know he’s nuts! By the time Ted Cruz was in law school, poor old Goldwater would complain to John Dean:

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”

Speaking of demented authoritarians, it’s gonna be interested to see the pushback here:

Dozens of climate scientists and environmental groups are calling for museums of science and natural history to “cut all ties” with fossil fuel companies and philanthropists like the Koch brothers.

A letter released on Tuesday asserts that such money is tainted by these donors’ efforts to deny the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change…

The letter is a project of the Natural History Museum, a mobile museum that draws attention to “social and political forces that shape nature yet are left out of traditional natural history museums,” said its co-founder and director, Beka Economopoulos.

A petition drive, also released on Tuesday and sponsored by environmental organizations including Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, urges the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History to “Kick Koch off the board!”

Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University and signer of the letter, said the donors seek a halo they do not deserve. “Cloaked in the garb of civic-mindedness, they launder their image while simultaneously and covertly influencing the content offered by those institutions,” he said…

***********
Apart from watching the birds flip by, what’s on the agenda for the day?

Reader Interactions

87Comments

  1. 1.

    raven

    Soon after the U.S. and other major powers entered negotiations last year to curtail Iran’s nuclear program, senior White House officials learned Israel was spying on the closed-door talks.

    The spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to penetrate the negotiations and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal, current and former U.S. officials said. In addition to eavesdropping, Israel acquired information from confidential U.S. briefings, informants and diplomatic contacts in Europe, the officials said.

  2. 2.

    Baud

    @raven:

    This is fascinating.

    U.S. officials said Israel has long topped the list of countries that aggressively spy on the U.S., along with China, Russia and France. The U.S. expends more counterintelligence resources fending off Israeli spy operations than any other close ally, U.S. officials said.

  4. 4.

    Baud

    @raven:

    “It is one thing for the U.S. and Israel to spy on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal U.S. secrets and play them back to U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on the matter.

    The U.S. and Israel, longtime allies who routinely swap information on security threats, sometimes operate behind the scenes like spy-versus-spy rivals. The White House has largely tolerated Israeli snooping on U.S. policy makers—a posture Israel takes when the tables are turned.

    ETA: Spying is a lot like swinging.

  5. 5.

    Major Major Major Major

    I for one am off to Tokyo for the week.

    This is shaping up to be a lovely honeymoon :D

  9. 9.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Baud: I’d be worried if our intelligence agencies were more Mission Impossible and less Burn After Reading.

  10. 10.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    New Zealand just won an astonishing cricket match, with native South African Grant Elliott clubbing a six on the second to last ball to beat South Africa. New Zealand advances to its first ever World Cup final, and in so doing denying the South Africans their first ever trip.

    Tomorrow night it’s Australia/India in the other semi and schrodinger’s cat is sure to be following.

  12. 12.

    BobS

    @raven: 348 members of the House of Representatives voted yesterday urging Obama to provide military assistance to Ukraine. With regard to those who didn’t, there’s considerable overlap with those who skipped Netanyahu’s speech (as well as those who voted against authorizing military force in Iraq).

  14. 14.

    Randy P

    It may come as news to our Republican traitors senators, but spying for Israel is still considered spying and people go to jail for doing it.

  16. 16.

    Mustang Bobby

    @Randy P: Yeah, just ask Jonathan Pollard.

    On the Cruz front, he says he wants to “repeal every word of Common Core.” Okay, but it’s tough to repeal something that isn’t a law. I’m sure he knows that but his audience doesn’t, so what’s wrong with making up bullshit if you know it will get thunderous applause?

    On the home front, enjoying my second full day of spring break by taking my trophy-winning Pontiac wagon into the shop to check on fuel tank issues and get the wiper motor replaced. The rainy season doth approach.

  18. 18.

    Baud

    I saw clips of Cruz’s announcement on the news last night. Might be just me, but I didn’t think the visuals were very good for Cruz.

  20. 20.

    Joel

    @Baud: Honestly, can’t blame the Israelis for spying on us. After seeing how embarrassingly badly the US has been caught with its hand in the cookie jar re: Germany, France, etc. we don’t have much of a moral leg to stand on.

    Conspiring with the House is another story, though.

  23. 23.

    JPL

    Ted Cruz was on CBS news and said most of the 16 million people receiving health care through ACA is because of medicaid expansion. He also said 6 million people were thrown off of their health coverage and made to buy insurance that covers less. Oh and ACA is a job killer.
    When asked to give one sentence on why he’d be a best candidate, Cruz said he’d always tell the truth.

    hmm

  24. 24.

    ThresherK

    Citizens’ freedom and small government (except when it isn’t) alert: Texas* wants to fine businesses $10k for putting up “no guns allowed” signs. A bill is in their Meth Lab of Democracy right now.

    (No link right yet, looking for a non-wingnut source, but not looking exhaustively.)

    (*Aw geez, like that’s a surprise.)

  26. 26.

    MattF

    I was just thinking the other day that Cruz is really the first no-kidding wingnut religious lunatic to be treated as a mainstream candidate. And I see the religion as really the basis of his candidacy– he could be a televangelist, he could follow in his dad’s footsteps. This means to me that the talk about grift and/or getting a FOX News job misses the point– Cruz is not Glenn Beck, he is something new.

    ETA: And points to Goldwater for predicting it.

  27. 27.

    Elizabelle

    @raven: Germanwings, wholly owned subsidiary of Lufthansa. Budget carrier, route was Barcelona to Dusseldorf; flight down about an hour into flight over the southern Alps about 65 miles from Nice.

    CNN must be orgasming.

    Watching BBC Worldnews, and they’re all in shock. This does not happen much with top European airlines. Especially not with mighty Lufthansa.

    SOS sent just before plane went down; BBC guests wondering if plane or a pilot sent the SOS message.

  31. 31.

    debbie

    @MattF:

    he could be a televangelist,

    That’s exactly what I was thinking while watching that speech! Or a Tony Robbins/Joel Osteen kind of vibe.

  34. 34.

    Elizabelle

    @MattF: And Sinclair Lewis, years before Mr. Goldwater.

    From The Sinclair Lewis Society at Illinois State U:

    Here’s our most asked question:

    Q: Did Sinclair Lewis say, “When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross”?

    A: This quote sounds like something Sinclair Lewis might have said or written, but we’ve never been able to find this exact quote. Here are passages from two novels Lewis wrote that are similar to the quote attributed to him.

    From It Can’t Happen Here: “But he saw too that in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word ‘Fascism’ and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty.”

    From Gideon Planish: “I just wish people wouldn’t quote Lincoln or the Bible, or hang out the flag or the cross, to cover up something that belongs more to the bank-book and the three golden balls.”

    There was also a play called Strangers in the late 1970s which had a similar quote, but no one, including one of Lewis’s biographers, Richard Lingeman, has ever been able to locate the quote.

  35. 35.

    beltane

    @raven: The missing Malaysian jet was lost over the sea. No real information and plenty of empty space for endless conjecture. This will be played as pure maudlin, and what journalist would not like to be sent to the French Alps with an expense account

  39. 39.

    Elizabelle

    @raven: Good morning, raven.

    I think there’s def a racial component — maybe better understood as “first world” travelers than sheerly melanin. Would an Air Nigeria crash, or the loss of a Turkish or Iranian airliner over mountains — as has happened in recent years — be the sole topic on BBC World News? I say no.

  41. 41.

    beltane

    @Elizabelle: There were also a lot of subtle aspersions cast at the competency of Malaysia Airlines. Will this be the case when dealing with a Lufthansa subsidiary?

  42. 42.

    ThresherK

    @Elizabelle: I had to bite my tongue to keep from making a wry remark about my surprise when I heard “Lufthansa” (instead of “RyanAir”).

  43. 43.

    Elizabelle

    @beltane: Yeah. Legend of wicked smart first pilot, who loved simulator flying, and Keystone Kops Malaysian officials. Couldn’t even divulge in which body of water to focus recovery search.

  44. 44.

    Keith G

    @MattF: Cruz is a petit demagogue who can have great success with a very specific audience. My question is about Cruz’s learning curve. How quickly can he expand the size of a receptive audience?

    The odds may be against him, though he is aided by the irrationality of Republican primary voters.

  45. 45.

    Elizabelle

    I’m curious why all the government officials batted down hope for survivors asap. Obv the terrain, but wondering if another jet, maybe military, was aloft and saw what happened. Even on radar.

  46. 46.

    ThresherK

    @Elizabelle: I prefer bringing up Goldwater, simply because 1) it’s true, 2) the wingnuts pick and choose what to worship about him, and 3) more people know who he is, especially our Beltway Inbreds.

    (And yes, I intentionally used worship.)

    Curious who will be the next lefty which Teabaggers exhume, a la Mormons, to “convert” to conservatism, a la their recent dalliances with Truman, JFK and MLK. I’d love for them to take on Sinclair Lewis, because it’ll prove how stupid their exercise is.

  49. 49.

    Elizabelle

    In non-aviation news: several of Sinclair Lewis’s favorite recipes, from The Sinclair Lewis Society site.

    The Sinful Chocolate Cookies look fab. Bourbon an ingredient, to keep the snake-talking preachers’ fans away.

    Forgot that S. Lewis won the Nobel Prize for literature, and declined the Pulitzer for Arrowsmith.

    Need to read him. Prescient guy. Would like to see his take on the early 20th century.

    Born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. Southeast of Ted Cruz’s Calgary, Alberta birthplace.

  50. 50.

    MattF

    @ThresherK: Not to mention George Orwell. He was a Trotskyite in the ’30’s, fer Pete’s sake. Anti-Stalin, but no less leftist for that.

  51. 51.

    Keith G

    @Elizabelle: It very easily could be racial, just as other factors may have predominant impact such as geographic proximity and historic and cultural ties.

    I think it is very important to monitor any conduct influenced by ethnic bias. At the same time, it is tiring and a bit clichéd to hear critiques of such conduct called out in advance of any action.

  53. 53.

    Major Major Major Major

    Ok, looks like I’ll be taking the l0razepam early for this flight. Thanks a lot guys :-/

  55. 55.

    Keith G

    @Elizabelle:

    I’m curious why all the government officials batted down hope for survivors asap.

    Because there wasn’t any hope?

    I guess anything is possible, but it looks like the plane returned to ground in the maritime Alps south of Mercantour National Park, a place of very beautiful terrain but not one conducive to surviving a rapidly aborted air flight.

  56. 56.

    Elizabelle

    @ThresherK: From your Goldwater RationalWiki link (and thanks for it):

    “On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God’s name on one’s behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. [Methinks Grover Norquist fashioned his “no tax pledge” along the lines of a religious campaign. Which Republicans would be more susceptible to, particularly after the 1980s, when the evangelicals gained strength.]

    I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in “A,” “B,” “C” and “D.” Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?
    And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of “conservatism.”

    Goldwater knew what he was dealing with. These are John Birchers, now wrapped in Christianism.

  57. 57.

    Randy P

    @Major Major Major Major: It’s funny, but I never really contemplate safety when flying. I’m more focused on annoyance at the person whose seat back is in my lap.

    I worry more about crashes when driving, which I hate. Especially when driving tired. I’ve had a couple of scary near misses from being tired, and I’ve seen some terrible one-car accidents in good conditions which I assume were from tiredness, lacking any other explanation.

    Maybe it’s because I’m a numbers guy and I’ve internalized the statistics about flying vs driving safety.

  58. 58.

    geg6

    @Randy P:

    Nah. I’m not really much of a numbers person (despite the fact that my career has been in financial aid). And I feel the same way. Don’t worry much in a plane. On a highway? Totally different story.

  60. 60.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @Randy P: Which is why I’m always amused when I see people on science blogs complaining “where are all the flying cars we were promised?” When I first saw comments like this I truly thought they were joking.

    But they’re serious.

    Whenever I read an article about scientific advancements, or progress that was predicted 50 years ago (but didn’t materialize) there are invariably reader comments asking why we were cheated out of flying cars.

    I see so much careless driving, so much aggressive driving, people half-asleep, kids texting (my car broke down last year. The dealer sends a kid in a van to pick me up when my car was fixed. The kid was texting while he drove me. Almost rear-ended another car at a stop light. I had to ask him to please stop texting.) and of course every day my local media features the mugshots of men and women charged with DWI (twice and sometimes three times the legal limit).

    That’s all we need. Flying cars. What could go wrong?

  62. 62.

    Cervantes

    @MattF:

    I was just thinking the other day that Cruz is really the first no-kidding wingnut religious lunatic to be treated as a mainstream candidate. And I see the religion as really the basis of his candidacy– he could be a televangelist, he could follow in his dad’s footsteps.

    Be that as it may, guess who said the following about Ted Cruz:

    This bomb-throwing stuff and ‘I’ll be a lone wolf and I’m the man in the Senate who is going to be like Jimmy Stewart and I’m just going to Washington to represent the people,’ it’s nonsense.

  63. 63.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @Cervantes:

    HUDSON NY – Soft spoken and shy, Eric Garner Jr. shares what his life was like when his father was alive.

    “It was good, better, supportive. He was at every game,” said Garner.

    A basketball player and a student at a community college in New Jersey, Garner is a regular 20-year-old guy who unwillingly found himself at the center of a heated national debate on racism.
    “He’s a victim of his life being changed and altered forever. It will never be the same and that’s in part due to the criminal justice system,” said Gregory Mosley, a former lieutenant in the New York State Police and the director of the Law Enforcement Diversity Initiative.

    His father’s death, seen by millions in a viral video, sparked protests nationwide when a grand jury decided not to indict the white police officer that killed him with an apparent choke hold. Though a man of few words, Garner shared his perspective with aspiring police officers, telling them he no longer wants to get a driver’s license.
    “I don’t want to get stopped by the cops. I’d rather take public transportation,” said Garner.

    Garner joined the Columbia County district attorney, the county judge, and a defense attorney in speaking to a group of 23 recruits of the Law Enforcement Diversity Initiative- a program created to prepare people for success in the police academy and boost the number of minority officers.

    “It’s clear that police agencies that are more diverse are more effective and better serve the communities with which they stand,” said Mosley.

    “It’s an aspiring program for the young people who come out. They should have this in every borough in the city,” said Garner.
    Garner’s story resonated with a Puerto Rican recruit from the Bronx who has felt discriminated himself.

    “I want to see a change in my police department, so I have to be that change,” said Lester Zaborski III.

    Garner says if his father was alive to see him, he knows he would be proud.

    “He’d be happy that I’m talking to other kids about the story that we have experienced,” said Garner.

    Garner attended Monday’s session as a favor to the program director. On Tuesday, he will go back to being a student studying business, sports management, and playing basketball.

  67. 67.

    Cervantes

    @MattF:

    Not to mention George Orwell. He was a Trotskyite in the ’30’s, fer Pete’s sake. Anti-Stalin, but no less leftist for that.

    In what sense was Orwell ever a “Trotskyite”?

  70. 70.

    MattF

    @Cervantes: Well, from “Homage to Catalonia,” for example. I guess it’s fair to note that the Trots didn’t really enforce political discipline, but that was a feature, not a bug.

  72. 72.

    J R in WV

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Wow! Congratulations, and try to keep rested while traveling. Best wishes to your family for the future!

    Keep us posted on your adventures while overseas, so we can be properly jealous of your world wide travel!

  74. 74.

    Cervantes

    @ThresherK:

    Citizens’ freedom and small government (except when it isn’t) alert: Texas* wants to fine businesses $10k for putting up “no guns allowed” signs. A bill is in their Meth Lab of Democracy right now.

    There are still a few places in Texas where the law specifically prevents gun-owners from carrying their hand-guns (airports and polling places, for example) — and then there is the rest of Texas: let’s call it Gunland, for short.

    The bill in question applies in Gunland. What it does is (1) prohibit the banning of lawful concealed-carry hand-guns in many state and local public buildings in Gunland; and (2) punish local government entities and officials in Gunland who pursue such bans — by allowing gun-owners to sue for damages.

    Just so you know: the Texas Senate approved the bill a week ago.

    (No link right yet, looking for a non-wingnut source, but not looking exhaustively.)

    Fair enough.

    @beltane:

    So much for the sacrosanct nature of private property.

    The bill does not apply to private property — or federal property, for that matter.

  76. 76.

    Ruckus

    @Germy Shoemangler:
    Of course one of the big things that makes flying safer is the education, rules and rules enforcement of pilots. How many hours a day, how many days a month, even how long a shift is. Commercial flights above very small planes have co-pilots. There are minimum flight separations, takeoffs/landings are controlled. And even then there are close and too close situations. Flying cars? So not only will there be crashes but there will be falling debris. If you car can fly will you be restricted to very controlled airspace, like freeways or will you be able to fly over houses and urban areas? And even if not allowed (texting and using a phone already being against the law) will people do it anyway? Yeah flying cars, that will work out well.

  77. 77.

    Zinsky

    Ted Cruz looks like Bill Murray’s dumber brother, who picks his nose all the time. Truly shit wrapped on skin…..

  78. 78.

    jonas

    Jon Stewart picked up on this last night, but perhaps the biggest bit of derp in Cruz’s speech at Liberty was when he asked them to “imagine” a world where the government didn’t spy on your private communications, and then asked them to text “Constitution” to a number that would just add them to his social media outreach database.

    And he apparently was not being ironic. Don’t let the government have your information! Give it to me!

    Sure, these are mostly conservative evangelical college students, but even they are not that stupid. How many of them actually sent a text (which Ted made sound like they were really sticking it to the man)? A lot of them were just mocking him on YikYak.

  79. 79.

    Gin & Tonic

    Only marginally Cruz-related, but while on a long drive Saturday we were listening to some piece on NPR, which I think was originally a CBC piece, about the surfeit of beeping noises in our lives. The story got annoying with all the beeping and we turned it off, but there was some part about “tuning” the beep to actually alert or waken people. I can now say with some authority that if you want to awaken people, the best sound is not a beep, but the sound of a cat puking on your bed. That awakens you right quick. If it comes an hour and half before the alarm is set to go off, that’s particularly unwelcome. I think this will be a very long afternoon.

  80. 80.

    boatboy_srq

    @MattF: Grifting business rubes for politics is easier and more profitable than grifting individual rubes for Jeebus: the businessvolk are adults in possession of their faculties, and their pockets are much deeper.

  81. 81.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @Gin & Tonic: Our cat sleeps at the foot of our bed. If she heard that cat puking alarm, would it trigger a sympathetic puking response in her? The way seeing someone yawn makes me yawn?

    It would certainly wake me up, that’s for sure.

  83. 83.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ruckus: Flying cars would have to be driverless cars, under totally automated control with no hope of the driver taking over in a pinch. There’s no other way to do it that makes any sense at all.

    And even that doesn’t make a lot of sense, because even if the safety issues are solved, flying cars would be terrible gas-guzzlers. Heavier-than-air flight is an inherently inefficient way of getting around, and not practical without internal combustion engines of some sort.

  84. 84.

    Cervantes

    @MattF:

    Well, from “Homage to Catalonia,” for example. I guess it’s fair to note that the Trots didn’t really enforce political discipline, but that was a feature, not a bug.

    As I recall it, yes, Orwell shared many of Trotsky’s criticisms of Stalin. Is that sufficient reason to call him a Trotskyist? I don’t think so, because he also criticized Trotsky and Lenin.

    Certainly in comparison with Stalin, Orwell did think of Trotsky as a real intellectual, but still he felt that, had Trotsky prevailed instead of Stalin, he also would likely have betrayed the ideals behind the revolution. He says as much in, for example, an article you can find in his Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, but I don’t have my copy immediately to hand or I’d give you a proper citation.

  85. 85.

    Matt McIrvin

    …The fantasy people have, of course, is of rising into the sky and flying right over a traffic jam. But if we ever go to all driverless cars on the highways, the jams will probably be greatly reduced anyway, just because everyone will be doing perfect zipper merges, responding instantly to changes miles down the road and generally participating in collective flow control, and accidents will be much less common. That’s probably a long way off, but it’s a far more feasible vision than giving everyone a personal flying vehicle.

  86. 86.

    patrick II

    I have not seen PBS’s NOVA do a program on climate change — have NOVA done one and I missed it? Koch brothers are contributors.
    PBS also withdrew a documentary on the Koch brothers the brothers threatened to withdraw 25 million in contributions to PBS.

    Public donations from Kochs come with some giant strings attached.

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