Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

The revolution will be supervised.

A Senator Walker would be an insult to the state and the nation.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

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

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

I really should read my own blog.

You are here: Home / Popular Culture / Late Night Schadenfreud Open Thread: Ted Cruz Is DESPERATE

Late Night Schadenfreud Open Thread: Ted Cruz Is DESPERATE

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He’s at that tricky age for a would-be GOP master debater. Too old to be classed as a Young Gun, too young to be a Grey Eminence (also, that beard: Euggh). And the younger Repub strivers — Cotton, Hawley, Gaetz — are as cruel and amoral as he ever was, but with no pretention to grace or civility.

(Also, I suspect his kids liked Sesame Street better than they ever liked Daddy.)

Just look how the crass social-media mob treated his last entirely earnest & principled defense of his comrades in the Party!

Seriously, dude: You’re trying to gin up a feud with celebrity puppets?

Reader Interactions

51Comments

  1. 1.

    trollhattan

    Holy crap, Ron Perlman is 70? [checks] I’m-a going on the Ron Perlman diet in the morning.

    Texas, just keep embarrassing yourself. That’s about all you’ve got.

  2. 2.

    Yutsano

    I swear this exact sequence of events happened last year. Sesame Street has been tweeting about Pride since they got an account. Maybe it’s different players every year.

  3. 3.

    Amir Khalid

    Ted Cruz is such a silly person, isn’t he? Does he still dream of becoming President Cruz?

  4. 4.

    Yutsano

    And I’m just going to get this out right now: I have lost a lot of respect for Slava. He went down to a dark place that you really don’t want to go down with him if you want to keep your sanity intact. Especially with this moment and the treatment of Ethiopian Jews. Just had to get that out there.

  6. 6.

    Duane

    @Yutsano:  Conservatives have always been at war with Sesame Street. After all these years they can’t make peace with an imaginary place.

  7. 7.

    Kent

    To my shame I will confess to having once voted for Ted Cruz.

    It was the 2012 primary election and I was living in Waco. There were no contested races in the Dem primary so I asked for the GOP primary ballot as you are free to do in TX to do a little creative ratfucking.

    Cruz was running against David Dewhurst, who was the Lt. Governor and more or less a younger version of John Cornyn. Very old money establishment Texas-style GOP who was clearly the establishment favorite. Ted Cruz was this creepy frenetic guy full of flop sweat and smarminess that seemed much less electable than Dewhurst so I voted for him. But Texans refuse to be ratfucked when there is a GOP on the ballot, especially in 2012 which was peak anti-Obama tea party in Texas.

    Not that my vote ever made any difference. But still.

    I also once voted for Ted Stevens when I was living in Alaska and somehow this completely unhinged John Birch type woman escaped through the Dem primary to challenge him. Couldn’t bring myself to vote Green which was the other choice as I was still butt hurt by 2000.

  8. 8.

    trollhattan

    @Achrachno:

    I’ll be the happiest jackal in Jackaltown if Texas goes blue. But until they get rid of Abbott, Abbott lite, and Cruz, and give Cornyn’s seat to a Dem they are dead to me.

  10. 10.

    Another Scott

    In other news, AlJazeera:

    Putin’s rating is collapsing as anger grows in Russia
    Putin is losing popular support. Now Russians are going to take politics into their own hands.

    Roman Dobrokhotov by Roman Dobrokhotov

    Could Vlad actually lose?

    Dictatorships always seem very stable, until they aren’t.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  11. 11.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Duane:

    Conservatives have always been at war with Sesame Street. After all these years they can’t make peace with an imaginary place. 

    They need to puff some of the magic dragon and chill the fuck out.

  12. 12.

    Msb

    I agree that Ted’s beard is awful, but suspect that without it he would have no jawline, as he seems to have put on a good deal of weight. Too much bacon cooked around the gun barrel, perhaps. Seriously, I hope the weight gain isn’t health-related.

  17. 17.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Aziz, light!: Not right now – US-Canadian border is closed until July 21st – seriously.

    Hmmmmm……could we catapult “Ted” back to his native land?

    Come on.  Ted.

  18. 18.

    Heywood J.

    Watching Fat Wolverine step on his own dick on a daily basis, reminding everyone that Texas has more than its fair share of idjits, is comedy gold that never gets old.

    I mean, Rafael has to know that his wife and children loathe him, right?

  20. 20.

    Kent

    @mrmoshpotato:

    @Aziz, light!: Not right now – US-Canadian border is closed until July 21st – seriously.

    Hmmmmm……could we catapult “Ted” back to his native land?

    Come on.  Ted.

    Closed to Americans.  But if he is Canadian they still have to take him.  He just won’t be able to come back.  Win-win.

  21. 21.

    Kent

    @Heywood J.:I mean, Rafael has to know that his wife and children loathe him, right?

    NOBODY likes him except for those smarmy College Republican types like the young Steven Millers who think he is a God.

  22. 22.

    Yutsano

    @Another Scott: @bluehill:

    Another big one is Russia just had a massive diesel oil spill and Vlad is completely screwing up the response to it. He’s trying to deflect blame further down the chain but since all roads lead to him it’s not working very well. I’m a little surprised the article didn’t mention that.

  24. 24.

    Kent

    @Another Scott: Could Vlad actually lose?

    Dictatorships always seem very stable, until they aren’t.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

    I expect he could theoretically lose if he actually let legitimate and popular opposition candidates run against him.  But he has never allowed that and I doubt would start now.   So whatever upcoming election he will be facing would be against hand-picked opposition.  Which makes it even more of an uphill battle.    It would be like Trump hand-picking someone like Joe Lieberman to run against.  Someone he knew would make all loyal Dem’s skin crawl.

  25. 25.

    Achrachno

    @trollhattan: Would you talk to them if they got rid of Abbot, Cruz, 3-4 congressmen, and a future draft choice?

    I hear the Dem party in TX is a bit disorganized, so maybe we should just help them — if we knew what they needed.  I believe that progress was made there in 2018.

  28. 28.

    Kent

    @Achrachno:I hear the Dem party in TX is a bit disorganized, so maybe we should just help them — if we knew what they needed.  I believe that progress was made there in 2018.

    My experience living there (I left in 2016) was that it exists by default in black and Hispanic communities, and liberal enclaves like Austin  But barely at all in white areas outside of a few obvious types like white teachers, and even not a majority of them.  In terms of local structure, basically everything needs to be built from the ground up.  In white areas, GOPers would often be running unopposed for minor offices.

    White state-wide candidates would pop up like Wendy Davis who would mostly have to just run media campaigns in most of the state due to lack of local organization.  And might generate excitement but would always lose.

  29. 29.

    JWR

    It just never stops, does it?

    ROSAMOND, Calif. (AP) — The half-brother of a black man found hanged in a Southern California park was killed by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies Wednesday after they say he opened fire on them.

    The shots were fired shortly after 4:30 p.m. in the Kern County community of Rosamond, just north of the Los Angeles County border in the Antelope Valley, Sheriff’s Department officials said.

    I’m no expert, but in the TV news audio, there was a major fusillade of rounds fired, all of which sounded the same to me, all fired into an SUV the cops knew contained a woman, who was seriously injured, and an infant, who was not. And I know this may sound silly, but the connections here have me wondering just who might have been behind the hangings last week. (Hint: Could it possibly have been racist c-o-p-s? Would it be wrong to so speculate?)

  30. 30.

    smike

    @Achrachno: Bloomberg and everybody else, as well. This place is fucking huge. For me, it takes a day’s worth of driving in almost any direction to get out of here. And we have a bunch of totally different markets to compete in. Lots of rednecks, but lots of libs, too – of all colors. Make it easy for everyone to vote and the trick is turned.

  32. 32.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @Duane:

    @Yutsano:  Conservatives have always been at war with Sesame Street. After all these years they can’t make peace with an imaginary place.

    I have learned from social media that Sesame Street shouldn’t mention the topic of racism. Children in the audience are either white middle-class, and therefore too young to have such a shadow cast over their happy wee worlds. or some other color, in which case they have already been on the receiving end of racism so no need to waste time explaining it to them.

  33. 33.

    Dan B

    @Amir Khalid: There’s that pesky thing that both Mister Rogers and Sesame Street had black people, and many other “minorities”, on and treated as equals.

    The distaste for gay people still shows its roots in Calvinism and in machismo.  Bith have roots in a warped concept of superior virtue but are really about dominance and rigidity of social structure.  When shown the typical gay person I doubt they would furst think of sex, but there are many exceptions to that rule.  Most people would have to be told who was gay.  But the power to control sex and procreation seem increasingly antique notions when access to virtual and actual sex is ubiquitous in much of the world but seems to be decreasing.  The folks screaming about looming collapse of society from sexual license are missing the polarization for the trees.  Raphael “Ted” comes across as a fossil.

  34. 34.

    Dan B

    @Yutsano: And thawing permafrost being the cause of the diesel tank collapse might cause dissonance with Russia’s oligarchic economy, especially the dependence on fossil fuel exports.

  35. 35.

    Emma

    This is quite apropos to what I’m thinking of right now, lol. Started reading a YA novel with LGBTQIA sexiness and relationships with my (very innocent and Christian [but not evangelical or weird Christian]) tutoring student. Even in my socially liberal suburb, there’s no way that the school district’s English curriculum includes any LGBTQIA books, so I chose this book, Fever King, specifically to address that lack. I didn’t tell him that our book has LGBT+ characters, because I felt like pointing it out before reading it abnormalizes it, and I just want him to enjoy the writing and characters. Of course, it was easy to say that to myself, right up until the precipice of the first, pretty blunt mention of a character liking to screw other guys. I think I’m going to have to prime him just a little at our next session… but it sucks that I even need to think for a good hour on how to talk to him about unapologetically gay sexiness, whereas I wouldn’t have needed any kind of priming at all for even the most sexy cis-het M/F relationship. Grr.

  38. 38.

    Emma

    @Amir Khalid: I know it’s kind of a mouthful, haha, we just don’t have the language yet that encompasses it all yet. I’m still learning, too…

  41. 41.

    Emma

    By the way, in case anyone is interested in maybe introducing Fever King to their kiddos, the author’s FAQ is all the more reason to do so:

    “Q: Are there queer characters in the Feverwake series?
    A: Literally every character in The Fever King is queer. All of them. Fight me.
    Q:  Are there Jewish characters in the Feverwake series?
    A: Noam, Dara, and Lehrer from The Fever King are all #ownvoices Jewish.”

  42. 42.

    Geminid

    Texas will be a battlefield this year. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is putting serious resources into six Texas congressional races, trying to win red seats. Political analyst Rachel Bitecofer identifies 3 more possible flips. The targeted seats are suburban dominated districts like the ones Libby Fletcher and Colin Allred flipped in 2018.                And the contest for John Cornyn’s Senate seat could be a classic. Former Air Force search and rescue helicopter pilot M.J. Hegar is favored to win a primary runoff against Royce West, and I think she may be an exceptionally dynamic candidate. Cornyn polls at 33% approval, 33% disapproval, 33% no opinion- not good for an incumbent. Hegar has a compelling life story, and she radiates a cheerful toughness.That she has not held elective office may be an advantage this year, because there is an insider/outsider dynamic that favors outsiders, I think, and Cornyn is very much an insider. And Hegar is a woman. Even though they are a majority, women are still outsiders.

  43. 43.

    Chyron HR

    You sure seem scared to wrestle Jordan

    It’s probably because all the rapes he was involved in, Ted.

  44. 44.

    David Evans

    @Darkrose: Most of those have in common that they are (sometimes) persecuted minorities. But who is persecuting the asexual?

  45. 45.

    Emma

    @David Evans: Just because there aren’t any pogroms of asexual people doesn’t mean that asexual people don’t face any problems. When people have actually heard of their existence, it’s in the context of them being constantly mocked for “sexlessness,” which extends to their partners, if they’re lucky enough to find someone who actually understands their sexuality. The Trevor Project has a very useful page on the term.

  46. 46.

    Aziz, light!

    Rafael’s recent schoolyard tiff with Ron Perlman (“let’s you and him fight”) is both hilarious and pathetic. Why are right-wing clowns like Cruz so insecure about their manhood?

  47. 47.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Chyron HR:

    It’s probably because all the rapes he was involved in, Ted. 

    It was wrong of me to laugh at that, but I couldn’t help myself.

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